| Race Report by Florian Joos |
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Last Sunday I participated at the second round of the Dutch nationals 1/10th scale modified in Lelystad on the Midland RC track.
This permanent track has a technical layout with quite high kerbs. I had never ran on this track before, but everyone told it was a low grip track. As I had to study on Saturday, my dad prepared the car. He used our basic low grip setup, which features the super low profile damper mounts. This gives the car a bit more overall grip and is ideal for low grip tracks. He also mounted a Hobbywing V10 5.0 turn motor as it is a bit easier to use the full potential of the car.
Sunday we left home at 5.30 and arrived at the track at 8 am. Unfortunately the track was still damp, so I did some laps with my wet car, but on slick tires. In the meantime my dad prepared the race car with a new set of Rush tires (the spec tires for the Dutch nationals). Unfortunately we ran out of time and had to use the car directly in the timed practice.
When I hit the track, the car was really sweet to drive. It had a lot of grip on the low grip track, but still enough steering (we used the Zoozilla Preopard shell to get a bit more rear end grip).
Halfway through the practice I pulled in and decided to save my tires for the qualification and final.
During the warm-up lap for Q1, I noticed my car was really good, but had a little bit of on power oversteer. When Q1 started, I just nailed the car and tried to go as fast as possible. Unfortunately, I hit a damp patch when coming onto the main straight. I tried to save the car by accelerating, but went on the wet and crashed my car heavily. Fortunately enough, the only thing broken on my T4 was a front suspension mount. My dad repaired the car, detweaked it and it was ready just in time of Q2. For Q2 my car was really amazing and I was able to get the TQ by almost 15 seconds. I just could accelerate and steer it when and where I wanted.
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We decided to run the event on one set of tires, so I started my finals a bit cautiously. When I came into my rhythm, the car and electronics allowed me to pull a comfortable gap on the competition. For A3, we used some harder springs (2.7 front and 2.8 rear instead of 2.5~2.8 and 2.7) and the car was even better. On 6 run old tires I made my fastest laptime of the event.
In the end I won the race in front of 2017 Dutch modified champ Sidney Blokker and 2018 Dutch modified champ Rick Van den Akker.
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| Touring Car Results |
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1. Florian Joos - XRAY T4
2. Sidney Blokker
3. Rick van den Akker - XRAY T4
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| My next race are the Belgian nats in Zwevegem, so I hope to get a good result there as well. |
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