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| Race report by Alexander Hagberg |
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Another round of the Asian On-Road Championships was held at the famous TRC track in Hong Kong. Some 100+ drivers in three different classes joined the race which was held over three days, in hot and humid weather.
I joined the very competitive Modified category, with top drivers from both Europe and Asia. After an extremely close qualifying, I manage to take the 2nd place on the grid behind Ronald Völker. Unfortunately I missed out on TQ by just 0.1 seconds in the first two qualifiers, which was really frustrating, as I might as well have TQ'ed with just a bit more pace, and more luck with back markers etc. I thought that my car was good enough to TQ. The relatively hard Solaris 40 controlled tire made car set-up a bit tricky. In the end I opted for the standard rear suspension. I used the optional PSS shock system though, which has become a standard for us on asphalt tracks, but this time with a bit softer shock oil, to help the car transfer a bit more weight on this harder tire compound.
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| For the finals, I gave all I could to challenge Ronald. It seemed that his car started off better than mine, as he could pull away about 1 second for the first two minutes of the run. Eventually I could catch up towards the end. In A1 my car came in really well in the last two minutes, which meant that I could finally reel in Ronald and try to attack. It was too late though, and my overtaking attempt on the very last lap was not a successful one. A2 was fairly similar to A1, but I rolled it towards the end which meant that I lost a chance to attack Ronald again. In A3 I could cruise to victory as Ronald sat out that leg. Even on old tires, my car handled really well and I could control the race in front of Nicholas Lee and Meen. That meant that I had to settle for 2nd place overall! |
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| On the Friday night, I held another successful XRAY Workshop session at the TRC track. It was the most intense workshop that I have held to date, with the locals being very talkative, asking loads of questions about my T4 cars. I was glad to help, and really happy to see that such big interest was shown in this new thing that we are doing in collaboration with distributors and track owners. |
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| In the end I was a bit disappointed to have missed out on TQ, and in races like this, especially on such a technical track, makes it really hard to overtake in finals. It was a decent debut for our new T4'16 car. I had an amazing time in Hong Kong, it was my first visit to this country. I want to send out a big thank you to everyone that took so good care of me during my visit. Thanks to Anthony Shiu from World Model. Thanks to Frankie, Yan and Michael and everyone else from ORCA who made my stay and my birthday celebrations a particularly enjoyable experience! |
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| Modified results: |
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1. Ronald Völker
2. Alexander Hagberg - XRAY T4
3. Nicholas Lee
4. Meen Vejrak
5. Chavit Sirigupta
6. Ryan Maker
7. Felix Law
8. Naoki Akiyama
9. Hay Lai
10. Stick King
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