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trophys
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| The World Championship is always a place where the best of the best come to fight for one title - World Champion. The recent Electric Touring Car World Championship was like no other, it was the most prestigious and competitive race in the last two years. All of the racing teams were represented and everybody came well prepared, increasing the competition and making the race even more thrilling. |
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track
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XRAY was very proud to be the main and principal sponsor of this prestigious event, lending its support to the RC community in addition to making some of the best RC products on the market.
Having been back home for couple of weeks analyzing what Team XRAY did and didn't do, we would like to take this opportunity to make a small flashback on the Worlds. There is no reason to write about how the race finished, as it is aknown fact and a new history for another two years, therefore what interests most XRAY customers is a look at "behind the XRAY scene." |
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Greg Hodapp
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| At the World Championship in South Africa 2002, Team XRAY was a brand new team that achieved a great result and put their T1 car into the A final at the hands of factory team driver Jilles Groskamp. Since that time, the whole team and products have undergone huge changes, development, and improvement. The XRAY touring car family has significantly improved over the time, making it one of the most successful and highest performance car at this time. The 2004 racing year was extremely successful for the whole Team XRAY worldwide, achieving countless national titles all around the world, including the most prestigious US National titles. |
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Jilles Groskamp
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| The expectation and plans for the World Championship were only the highest. A few months before the Worlds, most of the team drivers participated in the Warm-Up Race, where amongst tough competition four of the XRAY cars got into the A final and Team XRAY driver Jilles Groskamp finished 3rd behind Atsushi Hara and Masami Hirosaka. Having a superb set-up and great experience from the Worlds track, the team continued to fine-tune their set-up, testing new improvements and ideas, to be ready for the upcoming Worlds. |
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Andreas Myrberg
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| Coming back to the track for the Worlds, it was a big shock for the team to find the track having a completely different "racing condition." Starting with the same set-up from the Warm-Up Race, it was concluded after a few practice rounds that the set-ups were not good enough and it was necessary to make a quick and risky decision: exchange the front one-way for a solid axle (which seemed to be the main source of problems) and look for completely new set-up, or try to tweak the current set-up. Even though there were only a the final practice rounds remaining, the team took the risk and installed the solid axle. |
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Ralph Burch
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| The completely different handling of the car now required completely different set-up, putting the team a few steps back in comparison to the other teams. Working very hard and close together, the team worked up their way up. In the morning practice before the rounds, XRAY were the fastest cars on the track with lap times of 12.7 and 12.8 sec while the other competition drivers were all slower at over 12.9 sec. |
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Joel Myrberg
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| The temperature increased in the afternoon during the heats, changing the racing conditions. The competitions' cars remained at the 12.8-13.0 sec pace while XRAY lap times slowed to 12.9-13.1 sec. This was an evident lack in the set-up which was solved at the end, but the problem was that this was solved after all the qualifying heats which by then was too late. To face the reality, the competition at this race represented at the level of a World Championship race. Tenths of second in qualifying decided if you finished in the A final or C final. Joel Myrberg running for XRAY missed the end of the A final by only 1/100 of a second, so highly competitive the race was. |
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Martin Hudy
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| Based on the race format, the best 4 of 6 heats counted. This combination was very "unfriendly" against the results of XRAY drivers, because none of the drivers got into the A final at the end. If there were either 3 or 5 or 6 best heats counted, there would have been 2 or 3 XRAYs in the A final. Unfortunately, using the race format of 4 best heats, none of the XRAYs made it to the A final, which moved all XRAY cars into the B final, where in total 6 XRAY cars managed to qualify. If we consider the top 20 cars on the Worlds, XRAY team would be the most successful having the largest portion of cars in the top 20, that is still a great success. |
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car of the worldchampion
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| Of course history remembers the winner only and Marc Reinhard outperformed the competition and showed his great racing skills. A well-deserved win for which we congratulate him and his team. |
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A big thanks goes to all XRAY drivers who participated at the Worlds for the excellent teamwork despite the initial problems we encountered. It was an amazing experience in such a short time to get to the topmost level and at the same time a shame missing the A final by so close a margin. Both the teamwork and the cars' performance were excellent and without any doubts had the potential to get several cars into the A final. Coming back from the Worlds, both the team and car have undergone a deep analysis with strategic plans for further improvement, because we at XRAY are not able to identify with not being at the top. The dedication for further continuous improvement has never been bigger and you can count on XRAY to bring only the very best.
Thank you to all the drivers, organizers, and competition for a great and highly-competitive race and thanks to all XRAY customers for supporting us.
Look to the future - it's an XRAY future. |
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track
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track
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stand
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car of Jilles Groskamp
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Ben Cosgrove
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