The 2006 Euros Warm-Up was held on May 27-28 on super-huge Turkheim track near Munich. The weather forecast for the weekend was very bad, predicting rain for the entire weekend. Many drivers decided to not attend the race due to the dismal forecast, and also many European drivers were at the 2006 Reedy Race in California.
Team XRAY was well represented with most all top drivers. Jilles Groskamp, Juraj Hudy, Alex Stocker, Michael Kramer, the Swedish trio Andreas, Joel, and Victor â” as well as myself â” were at the track on Thursday. The weather was not optimal because it was cloudy and cold, but it was not raining so this for us was very important. Free practice was also held on Friday but we were forced to take some breaks because of rain, but all in all we drove enough. The cars were working very well and every one of us was looking forward to the race.
Four rounds of qualifiers were held on Saturday and one round was held on Sunday and the two best points were counted. Because I wanted to drive at the German Nationals, where I have to qualify, I decided to drive the qualification round for the German Nationals together with Alex Stocker; the other XRAY drivers were driving the warm-up race.
The first and second qualifiers were run on a dry track. However, it then started to rain and the third qualifier was run on a wet track. The last qualifier was again run on a dry track. After the first qualifier, Victor won in front of Jilles and Andreas. Victor got 21:5'12" and fastest lap was 14.5sec. I won my SM class with 21: 5'07" and my fastest lap was 14.3sec. In the second qualifier, where grip increased, Michael Kramer won and he also made also the fastest round of the race with 21:5'05". I did not drive in the second qualifier because I had broken my receiver which caused interference. Because of the rain none of us drove the third qualifier. The fourth qualifier was driven again on a dry track, and the warm-up qualifier was again won by Michael.
Because of the rain the track did not have as much grip as in the morning, so except for me nobody made 21 laps in the fourth qualifier. The results were very mixed since some local drivers who were not as fast on a dry track drove on the wet track and got some good results. For example, in the warm-up class only 2 drivers drove on the wet track. Free practice was held after the qualifiers, so we had the opportunity to test different setups until 9:00PM.
It was a bad weekend for Joel and Victor because they had problems with setup and also battery dumping. However, Victor was very fast in the evening and was able to drive 14.3sec lap times. Jilles improved his setup as well and in the evening was one of the fastest drivers out there.
The last qualifying round was held on Sunday morning. The weather looked very bad and it was a matter of "when" rather than "if" the rain would start. The first two heats were driven on a dry track. Jilles was very fast. Unfortunately, the lap counting computer was not working properly so the last round had to be cancelled. I had no opportunity to drive because 30sec before my run the heavy rain started. Alex drove one heat before me so he drove on a slightly wet track and won the last qualifying round. The heavy rain did not stop so at 1:00PM the organizers decided not to run the finals, and thus made the results after the qualifying standings.
The grip on Thursday was not very high but on Friday and Saturday it increased. It was also the first race where I drove with a new brushless motor. Although the power was perfect, the car felt different than with brushed motor. I lost a lot of grip and it was more difficult to drive.
I decided to use brushless because of the awesome power, but I had to find a better setup. Although the track is super big and fast without any technical parts I tried using a solid axle. Usually a solid axle gives more understeer than a front one-way, but it also increases rear grip. However I was surprised that by using a solid axle I did not lose any steering. The car was 100% better and I immediately improved my lap times by 0.2sec per lap. On the down side, because of the power of the brushless motor, the tires overheated more quickly than usual. Plus, with a hard driving style the tires were completely damaged after only 3 rounds; because of that I had to learn to save my tires and not overheat them.
Driving more smoothly without any throttle pushing and strong steering I solved these problems. I was able to use same set of tires for seven rounds which is very good because at the Euros we will have to drive with one and half set for all six qualifiers.
Although my car was very fast I was not complete satisfied and I wanted to improve my lap times. I decided to change my front shock springs from white to light green because I wanted to get even more steering. This small step helped again and I was immediately one of the fastest drivers on the track. Almost all XRAY drivers were at the end using same setup. Although the weather was not perfect we had opportunity to test for almost 3 entire days which helped a lot. I think that this race was very useful for us because we now know a good starting setup for the Euros using a car with a brushless motor. |
