The new 2015/2016 EOS season started in Germany at famous Nurburgring this last weekend. Our work for the season opener started however much sooner. We have worked hard the whole summer on improvements for the XB4 as well to finish the XB2 which we partially managed to get on time for European Championship but at that time many of the parts were not finished. Since the Euros we focused to finish as much as possible for the first EOS which we managed very close. The XB4 we finished and run is the production version of the 2016 specs XB4 and the XB2 has almost all production parts with few last prototypes. Big thanks to Juraj and the whole XRAY production team for the extra hard work to get the cars on time.
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For the new season we decided to strengthen the off-road team with my brother and European Champion Ales Bayer as well with the recent European Championship winning on-road super star Bruno Coelho. For Bruno this was first time he run off-road indoors so we knew he will have a lot of work but considering this talent and the progress we did with the cars we were fairly confident. As such our track preparation started 1 week before with a private testing at Hudy Arena with myself, Ales, Bruno and Martin Wollanka. Already in the practice both Bruno and Ales showed a great potential and we kept working on the fine tuning the details until we were able to break the track records from the last EOS race in Trencin. Leaving the factory with a good feeling we travelled 1000 km to Germany to debut both new cars and both new additions to the team.
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The Friday started with free 2WD practice in the morning and 4WD practice in afternoon. The final production composite parts instead of rapid prototype parts we used at XB2 made a huge difference in performance and handling of the XB2 which was not fully competitive to anything else and we had good feeling from the first minute on the track. In the timed practice myself, Bruno and Wollanka were in the top 10 which confirmed our positive feeling. As a surprise to everyone came the outstanding debut of Bruno and XB2 after taking the TQ in qualifications in 2WD class with myself and Wollanka getting into A-main as well.
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The competition level has been nevertheless very high and in the 2WD finals Bruno made some small mistakes which unfortunately did not allow him to turn the TQ into a win. At the end it was Martin Wollanka who finished on podium in 3rd place.
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On Sunday the 4WD was on schedule. Already in the timed practice the all-new XB4â™16 showed a great potential when we were able to finish 1,2,4 which confirmed the good progress we made and made us also confident for qualifications. The first qualification was won by Wollanka, the second qualification by Bruno. Myself I had a very bad day as from the 4 qualification runs I was able to finish only 1 which of course was not enough.
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In the A-main final both Bruno & Wollanka pushed on Lee and despite Wollanka won in a very close battle one race the bad luck in the other finals did not allow to take the win but the double podium finish for both Bruno & Wollanka are a perfect debut result. I am confident that our XRAY customers will be very satisfied with the new XB4â™16 and the XB2. I am looking already now for the next race which will be nothing less than World Championship. Now back to XRAY factory to get ready for the Worlds.
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Final result 4wd:
1. Lee Martin 2. Martin Wollanka â“ XRAY XB4
3. Bruno Coelho â“ XRAY XB4
4. David Ronnefalk
5. Marc Rheinard
6. Tom Cockerill
7. Michal Orlowski
8. Jorn Neumann 9. Ales Bayer â“ XRAY XB4
10. Carson Wernimont
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Final result 2wd:
1. Lee Martin
2. Michal Orlowski 3. Martin Wollanka â“ XRAY XB2
4. Marc Rheinard
5. Carson Wernimont 6. Bruno Coelho â“ XRAY XB2
7. Jorn Neumann 8. Martin Bayer â“ XRAY XB2
9. Joona Haatanen
10. Joakim Nicolaisen
