| Race Report by Jilles Groskamp |
source www.realrc.net |
This year's LRP race with 8 world champions (including current world champ Marc Rheinard and 14-time world champ Masami) and numerous European champs was the most competitive ever! All teams were represented and it turned out to be a tough race.
Before this race I went to Geneva to practice for this race. The practice session was held near Orionâ™s headquarters at the CRF track. Most Peak/Orion drivers headed to the track to prepare for the race. Atsushi, Surikarn, Andy Moore, and David Spashett were testing there well. |
|
source www.realrc.net
(click to enlarge) |
| All guys looked really good and also motor guru Oscar Jansen was very happy with the performance of the new Rheinard Motor. The practice with all the top guys enabled me to compare the performance and I worked out small details on the set-up. The T1FKâ™05 worked perfectly right away, so I did not have much work to do, and it gave me confidence to test other things such as testing and comparing XRAY spur gears against other competition spurs to find any differences. |
|
|
| In the end I did not notice any differences so I returned back to the well-proven XRAY spur gears in which I have the most confidence for such an important race. I tested and compared different chassis thicknesses as well, but at that particular track the standard kit chassis proved to work very well and I did not find any big difference with the other chassis. Of course the LRP conditions will be different, so my experience with the chassis may be way different, but I decided to start at the LRP with the standard chassis and adopted a "wait and see" attitude. Being at the practice track with all the top guys and running some of the top lap times, I was fully confident for the upcoming weekend. On Friday morning we were heading to Eppelheim for the race. |
|
(click to enlarge) |
| Open practice started in the afternoon. Team XRAY was well represented with Ralph Burch and Mike Dumas from the USA. New team drivers Viktor Wilck and Alex Hagberg along with Joel and Andreas Myrberg came from Sweden. Of course Juraj and Martin Hudy were at the place to support the team. Our friends from Germany Alex Stocker and Steffen Leinburger represented the German XRAY team. Unfortunately Tony V, our forum master, couldnâ™t made it as he had his first national to attend at the same weekend. |
|
|
| In practice everybody was trying to adapt to the brand new blue carpet. After a few practice heats the traction finally started to increase and the set-ups had to be adjusted as well. In practice it was me and the T1FKâ™05 of Andreas who were setting the fastest times along with Marc Rheinard and Juho Levanen. At the end of practice everybody from our team seemed to be happy with the car and we were looking forward to the qualifications. It was obvious that each of the XRAY drivers had a slightly different set-up. I used anti-roll bars with dark blue springs in front and the shocks more laid down, while for example Martin was running kit springs and shocks in more stand-up position. At the end of practice, I was pretty satisfied with my T1FKâ™05 and I was not far off the pace. |
|
source www.realrc.net
(click to enlarge) |
It all started on Saturday with three qualifiers. For the finals, two out of four rounds counted by points. All drivers had a limited set of two LRP VTEC 24R tyres set and LRP top traction was the only additive allowed. All the other rules were based on the IFMAR rule book.
In the first round it was Marc Rheinard who was fastest with Hara on his tail. Spashett finished in third only 2/100 sec in front of me. This gave me a lot of confidence for the next qualification. |
|
|
| For the second round I didnâ™t change the set-up. The set-up I used was still the same I found in Geneva. In this round I improved my fastest time and finished again in the top five. We analyzed the set-up with Juraj and all the time worked out some small details changes to improve the car. |
|
source www.realrc.net
(click to enlarge) |
For the third and last round on Saturday I decided to change my shocks set-up. I added the foam bladder in the damper to increase rebound. This worked really well with a bit more traction. With a small error that cost me two seconds I still managed to go a few seconds faster then my previous best time.
Sunday morning we had the last qualification round. Because I had already a secured âśAâť final position we decided to change the set-up again. |
|
|
| Juraj installed on my car the new wide top deck which was mounted to the chassis through top deck stands both in front and rear. This stiffened the car a bit and gave it a bit more aggressive steering and the car was unbelievable fast. I was able to run 23 laps which was only done by four other drivers. |
|
Joel's car
(click to enlarge) |
| The other XRAY drivers were doing fairly well as well. Martin was in the third qualification heat running on a position that would qualify him for 8th place but he made a small mistake which moved him down to the 24th position, such a small differences were between the first dozens of drivers. In the end Martin qualified with Victor and Steffen in the C final. Joel along with Alex Stocker and Mike Dumas showed some excellent driving as well and they qualified in the B final. The whole team was very positively surprised by an excellent ride of the very young and talented Alex Hagberg from Swedend who managed to qualify in such a tough competition in the B final. XRAY placed 5 T1FKâ™05s in the top 20, which was the best result from any other cars. |
| Finals: |
|
The first final wasnâ™t really nice; there were a lot of accidents. I did not have any good luck at all. I was trying to be very cautions not to crash into Masami in front of me, but unfortunately the cars behind me got me off the track and I had to start from the very last position. I still managed to drive from last position to the final 5th. At the buzzer, Marc won the final with Masami in second.
The second final started again with a big crash. I had to start in last position after a marshal put me back on the track and the leader was already half a lap in front me. I just could not believe to have so much bad luck but I concentrated on racing. The car worked so well that I was driving through the crowd without problems, passing all the drivers and at the end I finished in 3rd position. In this final after Marc broke his car, Levanen took the win over Hara. |
|
source www.realrc.net
(click to enlarge) |
| The last final run saw again a crash between Juho and Hara who both had to retire. After a nice battle with David Spashett, I passed him out of the corner and closed up to Masami who was running in the second position. For some laps I had some very thrilling but very clean and fair fights with Masami. I was running for a few laps very tightly behind or along with Masami and all the time pushing on Masami to make him to give me a small space to pass him. |
|
|
| In one of the corners Masami left a bit of space which gave me the opportunity to pass him. Since I had perfect control over the car, I easily passed Masami and the crowd applauded for the great battle we had together. I was just behind Marc (who was leading) but it was already the last lap and Marc at the end finished 1.5 sec in front of me. Starting from 6th position and ending up in second position, with just a bit over 1sec behind the winner is an excellent result with which I am completely satisfied. |
| Final Thoughts |
(click to enlarge) |
- this was the most competitive indoor race ever
- all the worldâ™s best drivers were at this race, making it an unofficial carpet World Championship
- Marc showed why he is the World Champion
- Hara finished only sixth by not finishing two out of three finals
- XRAY T1FKâ™05 worked really well, especially in the finals
- the whole XRAY team worked very well and Juraj did an excellent job on set-ups
- there were in total 6 different cars in the A final
- XRAY had the most cars in top 20 |
|
|
Thanks to Juraj Hudy and XRAY for designing and making the best touring car ever. Thanks to the whole team XRAY and thanks to Oscar for the power.
Thanks to the LRP organization for such a big event.
See you next year,
Jilles Groskamp
Setup of Jilles Groskamp is available for download here.
|
|
