Round 5 of the Danish Championship was at the SOS club with a great and difficult track. The lay out has different levels so you jump from one level to another and you also have high sweeper like the on at Furulund in Sweden.
(click to enlarge)
The wetter was perfect with 25 degrees and once again a lot of drivers signed up â“ including Jonas Karup, who is the former European Champ in 1:10 Touring car. I asked Jonas why he decided to drive 1:8 off road, and his answer was the competition and also the many drivers in the class. Interesting to see how he will manage in the future and if we will get other interesting drives to the 1:8 offroad class. Jonas did well and after qualifying he was second â“ he has also many years of experience with 1:10 offroad.
(click to enlarge)
My Xray XB8-TQ powered with Novarossi Plus 21-05 engine did well but some stupid mistakes and miss of luck gave me a bad qualification ending in 10th position, even though I was at the track a week before to practice. My experience with the car was good but I needed some more speed and stability to be the fastest. So for the semi final I decided to change from 400 to 350 oil in the rear and then I raised the rear dampers one hole in the top of the shock tower.
(click to enlarge)
This gave me better handling in the bumpy areas and better rear grip, and I could drive home a good victory in the semi with starting position 1 for the final. The other Xray drivers got problems, and Claus Nielsen who is always fast got an engine stop in his semi final, leaving him just outside the 10 cars for the final.
I was very confident with the car and my driving skills had improved during the day, and for the final I had saved a set of Panther tires that I knew was the best choice and could give me even more speed. The warm up laps proved that the car was better than in the semi, and I only did two laps and went in the pit waiting for the start.
Claus my mecanic (click to enlarge)
Off went the start but after very few laps my car started to get very difficult to drive around, there was very little grip and it was so difficult to drive through jumps and bumpy areas. Steffen Culmsee with CEN could easily take the lead and build up a nice gap while I was fighting to be in top 3. At some point during the final I was so confused and thought that it was the tires or just my capabilities to drive a RC car that was the problem, but after the final I checked the car and saw that the rear damper had crashed the piston giving me a car that was totally without shocks absorbers.
Final positions:
1. Steffen Culmsee
2. Rune Gustavsen 3. Peter Harder XRAY XB8TQ
4. Robert Hansen
5. Tim Culmsee
6. Lars Alex
7. Jonas Karup
8. Michael Pedersen
9. Thomas Mikkelsen
10. Martin Antony
With 3 rounds left to decide who should be the 2006 champion it is very close, but I still have a 1 point lead!
My setup is posted. One point that I discovered was that I for the first time decided to go with 3,0mm anti roll bar even though the track had low grip. It gave much more steering and still a well balanced car that was easy to handle. Worth trying again!
