The last round of this seasonâ™s SIORC took place last Saturday in Gd Saconnex Switzerland. 79 pilots registered for the last round. A very low attendance as it was during the school holidays. The ERMC crew as usual prepared a fun but challenging track layout, with two distinct sections. The back portion was fast whilst the front section was technical. As usual the old touring car carpet provided low to medium grip levels.
The morning started out with the usual re‐seeding practice round which sorted and filtered the drivers into their qualification groups. Knowing that I am hopeless in doing fast consecutive three laps I paid special attention in trying 3 consecutive fast laps. According to the race announcer, to my surprise it was not me the fast but young gun David Naldini. However after studying the time sheets it turned out that the minimum lap time in the MYRCM timing software was 12 seconds.. Since I was the only pilot to have clocked multiple laps in the sub‐twelve seconds it didnâ™t take those times into account. Despite this mishap, I was second in the Quali group as I did not make a fuss.. I knew I could easily make the difference in the Qualies.
Out of the three Qualies, first qualy was a mess up as well as the timing software still had 12 second minimum lap time for 2WD, as it was corrected in the 4WD race groups only not in the 2WD category.. (geeez people.. sorry for going too fast in 2WD!!).. In the second Qualy I accomplished a decent run with no mistakes and was able to achieve 25 laps, and was the only driver to do so in that Qualy. In Qualy 3 I made a few mistakes and came out 2nd. Since I was slightly faster in my second Qualy I managed to TQ the 2WD class with my XB2.
Of the two finals, the first one was â legendaryâ™.. Starting 1st on the grid (my first ever TQ with the XB2), the countdown began and during the moment of silence before the start tone, I confused another sound in the hall with the start tone, which resulted in a blip in my finger causing my car to advance about 30 seconds.. a very swift marshal placed me back on my grid.. and at the tone I was able to take off.. after a lap or two the race directors announced that they decided not to give me a stop and go, but unfortunately the timing software decided otherwise.. by advancing 30 cm more the timing loop caught me and therefore had me virtually last as it didnâ™t count me departing initially.. Anyways.. due to my blistering pace I managed to â virtuallyâ™ lap everyone except for the â 2nd positionâ™ man Arthur Brule.
Finished 2nd after amazing pass on Arno Buffat.. This is a must see final and I shall upload my CHAMVISION video on YouTube! Look for it.. ☺ In the Second final I was a victim of my stubbornness. Other drivers switch their rubbers to new ones. Since my car was perfect, I decided not to switch, but I should have! My tires were dead and were dying more on each lap.. I still managed to finish 3rd. Overall I finished second. I was happy with my result taking into account the arm wrestling encountered with the timing software. A lot learned from this race and will end up being a lesson more to teach my young gun 6 year old son, who used my old 2WD chassis to stun everyone there!
