The 2016 NSW titles were recently held over the 9th-12thJune at the John Grant International Raceway Sydney Australia, a favourite for many racers. Moved from the traditional Easter long weekend, the weather was perfect for the duration of the event and plenty of great racing was had over the classes.
I was competing the 1/10 GP class with my XRAY NT1. I used Thursday practice to focus on driving and get into a rhythm on the track as well as to tune my engines. By the end of the day I had two engines that were running well to choose from and I was driving ok but knew I would have to wait to see how the traction would be on Friday before tuning the chassis.
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With two qualifying rounds being run on Friday there wasnâ™t much of a chance to test the anything in the Morning, I tried my race car for the first time on the weekend in the first round of Qualifying knowing that the early rounds would be slow as the track continued to grip up. Surprisingly the car was performing fantastically the first time out and I decided to push for a good run anyway. I was able to race for the lead with Jeff until a lapped car spun in front of me and I collected it losing a lot of time and tweaking the car. Despite this I was encouraged by the performance of my NT1 and I decided to try a different engine and body shell for the second qualifying round.
The change to the Protoform SRS-N body gave my car a lot more traction overall and particularly more stability, this with the stronger engine made my NT1 awesome to drive but my car stalled during the fuel stop and was collected heavily by another car. After returning to the track the car didnâ™t feel anywhere near as good as before and I knew there was a problem somewhere after the two crashes.
I sacrificed some later qualifying runs trying different tyre and body combinations to try and regain the feeling I had with the car on Friday but I could never get it the same. After rebuilding the car overnight I was unable to see anything wrong. After qualifying I would line up in position 3 for the 30 minute final.
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The type of grip on the track was quite unnatural on the painted surface and I found it difficult to find a balance between steering and on throttle grip. This was quite frustrating because it meant that there was no reward for driving a car that was agile and carried good speed into the corner as these setups were punished with lack of traction off the corner.
I decided to make a big change for the final to help free up the rear of the car through the corner and carefully worked out the tyre strategy. In the warmup the car felt quite loose in the rear but I knew it would get better as the tyre sizes came into their window but the opening laps were tricky. While battling with another car I ended up on the grass and lost some 8 seconds and dropped back to last. Meanwhile George Karozis was flying with his NT1 and had moved from ninth into second and was showing great pace before the pin in his carâ™s front upper arm parted company forcing retirement. As the tyres settled in I was able to fight my way back to second at the finish but because of the crash was never able to put any pressure on the leader who was able to make an extra fuel stop and cruise.
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Final results:
1. Jeff Hamon 2. Tim Lee â“ XRAY NT1
3. Alex koussas
4. David Chen
5. John Germanos
6. Craig Hawkins 7. Andrew Bardetta â“ XRAY NT1
8. Tim Moylan
9. Tony Firth 10. George Karozis â“ XRAY NT1
Pics and Video Credit: Penrith Districts Nitro Racing
