| RAce report by Carlos Manuel |
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| Last weekend the 1st round of the Portuguese national championship took place in Coimbra, with rain all day long. |
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| Has this was my first time driving in the rain, I didn't know what to expect. The first qualification was raining so I didnâ™t run it, thinking that the rain could stop. Before the second qualification it was clear that the rain wouldn't stop, so there I went, I didnâ™t feel any confidence with myself driving in the rain, so I ended up in 3rd place. In the third qualification my car went to spin in a turn and got hit by another car, ending my hopes to improve my time. |
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My dad fixed my car and made some changes, during the lunch time, hoping that it would help me, as we had no time to test it we jumped right into the final. During the lunch time the rain stopped and the track started drying out, so the question was what tires to use. We had 3 minutes of warmup to figure that out. I started with normal tires, but at the time the cars were called to the grid, I told my dad to switch to rain tires, because I had a feeling that it would start to rain again. So my dad changed them during the countdown and put my car in my place with 6 seconds to go.
I was a bit scared, so I decided to wait for others and start the race from the back to see how the car would behave with rubber tires. To my surprise, the car was good and I managed to gain places 1 by 1, in 8th lap I was already in 1st place, and was a lot more confident with myself and how the car was handling, so I just thought to myself that the only thing I would need to do was drive safe until the end. |
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| The results were: |
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1. Carlos Manuel - XRAY NT1
2. Franco Vilarinho
3. Tiago Afonso
4. Hugo Mendes
5. Filipe Pinheiro
6. Filipe AntĂłnio Morgado Reis
7. Rui Completo - XRAY NT1
8. Rolando Caseiro
9. Nuno Silva
10. Sandro Taniça
11. Tomás Andrade - XRAY NT1
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