On the weekend of 8th and 9th of July we held the Swedish National Championships in 1:10 NitroTouring, 1:8Track and 1:10 Electric touring at one of our biggest tracks in Sweden, the Ă–rebro RBC race track. This track is originally made with 1:4 scale cars in mind so the track is huge for 1:10 cars.
With my general lack of time I only arrived late on Friday to get some laps and general feeling of the car. A little bit to my surprise the car was feeling quite good instantly, I made some test runs and the only thing I changed was to use harder springs all around to handle the high forces the car was put through in the big banked curve at the end of the straight, this made the car more stable in general so everything felt quite good when the evening came.
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On Saturday I only had time for the organized practice because I had to go to a wedding in Stockholm (the things you do to be able to race RC cars!!!) and I was prepared to start from the back but the sky had opened and it was raining. It was decided that 2 rounds of qualification was to be run on Sunday when the weather forecast was looking better.
When I was back at the track late Saturday evening only some test runs had been done with the nitro cars in the rain so everyone was quite happy when Sunday came and the track was dry to race on.
The first qualify run was quite good and safe, I immediately got in the lead and opened up a gap to the always steadily driving Per-Ola H?rd.
I made some changes to test for the finals so the 2nd qualify run started a bit edgy and I didn't improve but no one else did either so I ended up with TQ and was the only one doing 15 laps. The good thing do was that the car was yet again a bit faster!
In the final practice I just tried a little bit more sway bar in the front and toe in in the rear, I just got a feel for it when my radio started to alarm of low battery, I made it to the pits but the car felt ok going in to the finals although I didn't make any test of fuel mileage and there was a big change in weather so this was worrying, also the tire usage was quite high so I planned for doing one stop.
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When the finals was about to start the sun was shining with its full force, really a nice setting for racing RC cars!
The start went and I was immediately pulling away from the rest and at 4 minutes I had the whole straight and first turn between me and the 2nd racer Per-Ola that held a gap down to our Norwegian friends Anders Mikkelsen and Petter S?lvberg. Also driving an XRAY NT12017 was the 3rd qualifier Erika Hellquist, she had a tough start and was down a bit in the start but she was not planning to change tires.
Since I was worried about fuel, I opted to go for 4.30 refueling time, so I got called in and just passed the counting loop going in to the 2nd banked curve when I ran out of fuel...my pitman Thomas Livbom got my car but everything felt lost when I saw Per-Ola leaving the pits and my car was still not back on the track but then his engine cut leaving the pits so I was in the game again.
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We lost a lap and then I got a little bit too anxious to pass a car on the long straight that ended badly so I lost even more time out of my own stupidity....
After that I steadily improved from 7th place up to 4th when I ran out of fuel again just befor my pitstop and I lost more time.
I was always the fastest car on track so I was steadily gaining time on the cars in front of me and when it was time for my tire change at half time I was in the lead again.
The tire change was super quick (thank you Thomas Livbom and Silvano Insalaco!) but there were 2 racers who were not too far behind not doing any tire change so I fell back to 3rd place but was back in 2nd just a couple of laps later.
When there was about 15minutes left I was again back in the lead and could control the race so after an eventful race I won by more than 2 laps in front of Per-Ola Hard and some laps further down in third place putting her NT1 2017 on the podium without any tire change was Erika Hellquist.
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1. Mickael Brandt - XRAY NT1
2. Per-Ola Hard 3. Erika Hellquist - XRAY NT1
4. Hans Elmerfors - XRAY NT1
5. Anders Mikkelsen
6. Thomas Gidlund 7. Ake Tornros - XRAY NT1
8. Petter Solvberg
9. Ronnie Pettersson 10. Ashor Denkha - XRAY NT1
