Ulvila is small town about 250km north-west from Helsinki. Track is situated next to Go-kart track in the middle of the forest. Track length was about 280m, it was fun to drive and it had some nice jumps. Surface was mixture of sand and clay. So track was slippery on some parts and track got bumpy while the race progressed.
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43 drivers took part on this race and six of them drove Xray. Three of those six Xray cars ended up in the final. On first round track was fastest and easy to drive. After that track got worse and worse on every round. Markku Honkanen was driving constantly with out making too many mistakes and his car was handling well. He took 2nd place after qualifying.
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Timo Jalas was struggling with his setup and he was changing carâ™s setup on every round. On last round when he got his setup working he broke front bearing from steering knuckle at warm-up when he landed little sideways on his front tire. After qualifying Timo was 7th.
Jouko Näätänen was driving his first 1/8 off-road race and he took things easy. On first round he had little problem when car body flew of f after jump. His mechanic had forgotten front body clip. Jouko was 13th after qualifying. So three Xrays straight in to the semi-finals. Not too bad.
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On semi-finals Markku didnâ™t have any problems and he came second in his semi-final. Joseph Quagraine won that final. Timo and Jouko were in the same final. Now Timoâ™s car was working better and he clime up to second place easily. When came time to first refueling Timoâ™s car flamed out. Luckily it happen on the pit. So not too much time was lost. Timo kept his second place but first place was running away. When it came time for second refueling and Timoâ™s car flamed out again on the pit. Luckily it didnâ™t had any affect on results. Jouko was driving steadily whole semi-final and he was on fifth position. After 15min he was one lap ahead of sixth place driver. So he just took things easy and kept driving his own pace. To secure last final place.
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3 Xray drivers had worked they way to the final. Markku on 2nd position, Timo on 4th and Jouko in 10th place. Start went ok. Everybody cleared first corner without problems, but after couple of turns someone crashed his car in front of Timo and took Timo with him. So now Timo was left on last position. Timo had his hands full of work, if he wanted to clime on the top.
Before final Timo made some setup changes to his car. He wanted to test different setup because he hadnâ™t had time to do any testing before the race. That setup change proved to be wrong choice. Car was handling worse than it was in the semi-final and Timo had to work hard to keep the car on the track. Timo started slowly clime up from the bottom. About 3min left of the race Timo had to come for refueling. At that point Timo had just get 3rd postion but on refueling car flamed out and Timo lost enough time to loose 3rd place.
Markku drive good pace through whole final and cased the leader but just wasnâ™t able to catch the leader.
Jouko had done better that he expected all ready and he didnâ™t have any pressures. He just kept going like he had done the whole race. To drive his own pace and keep the car running and on our wheels and that tactic pay off in the end. Jouko finished 6th on his first 1/8 off-road race.
Race was well organized and everybody had good time at the race. Thanks to everybody who was organizing this great race and thanks to all other racers for making this race good and exciting.
Race results:
1 Jarno Siltanen 2 Markku Honkanen, XRAY XB8
3 Petri Mylläri 4 Timo Jalas, XRAY XB8
5 Markus Kallio 6 Jouko Näätänen, XRAY XB8
7 Tomi Björkman
8 Joseph Quagraine
9 Ari Heinonen
10 Topias Airola
