Last weekend (June 9-10) the Nordic Championship was held in Trollhättan/Sweden. We did really
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| The supersmooth track in Trollhättan! |
look forward to this race as this is our hometrack although this year we have not been running so much at this track as Marcus lives on Gothenburg and I work in Gothenburg which leaves us to do most of our testing and practice a the Väst-8 track. However, one week before the Nordic Championship we did half a day of setup testing at the Trollhättan track. From the beginning the setup felt ok and our lap times was very close to the fastest ones from last years race. Engine performance from the NovaRossi PTS engine was also good (we have not yet run the new Keep-On engines because it has been really bad weather or I have been on business trips.... ) On Friday before the race we did even more test and as the track is super smooth (no bumps whatsoever) we tried a couple of new setups (harder springs, from green to grey). It turned out that this made the car a little bit faster! :-) On the engine side we used the well proven and good performing NovaRossi PTS engine and in combination with the new Serpent clutch it was working really good. We made a small adjustment to the clutch by replacing the new (and smaller clutch weights) with the "old" ones from last years clutch. This seemed to be a good setup for the clutch because it worked even better! Weather forecast for the race was not good. A lot of rain was expected and when we arrived at the track on Saturday morning it was wet.... this meant that both the free practice and 1st heat practice was down the drain.... for the 2nd and last heat practice the track was almost dry so we could do the final little tweaks before first q-heat. First qualifier started really well and Marcus was battling with Adrian Berntsen who was a little bit faster. 5min into the qualifier Marcus did run a little bit wide just before the main straight and went onto the grass.... Ok, not so good start but when looking at the lap times we were confident for the remainder of the qualification sessions. 2nd qualifier did rain out but the forecast for the remainng q-sessions looked good. The track does actually dry rather fast due to that the surface has draining tarmac which is good. Even when there is heavy rainfall there is hardly any water standing on the track. For the 3rd q-session we did a little bit of gamble by running really small tires (under 72mm in the rear). With the right roll-out set it should work... Did it work? Yes! A new lap record for the track, 13.154s!! and 2nd on the q-ranking. Looking good for the final q-session. As we have tested the Serpent 966 on small tires we took the opportunity to test it with large tires during the final q-session as a preparation for the semi finals. What can I say? It worked even better! Best laptime was now 13.054s and close to 32 laps. Adrian Berntsen was even faster with 13.034s as fastest lap (and new lap record) and also making 32 laps. Marcus did have a small mistake losing about 2s but even without that it would have been a challenge to beat Adrian today. Result from the qualifying:
1. Adrian Berntsen Norway Capricorn/Capricorn 32 laps 7.11
2. Marcus Lindner Sweden Serpent/NovaRossi 31 laps 7:02
3. Christoffer Hedlund Sweden Xray/Orcan 31 laps 7:08
Sunday and all the finals! Well, not a good start as the rain was pouring down... :-( Using the time before the semi final to prepare for wet conditions but I must say that we really hate wet conditions. All the exitements is gone and fast/close racing you can just dream of.... To be one the safe side we opted to use an older NR engine as we did not want to ruin the good race engines. Semi final started ok considering the conditions. Marcus and Bengt Andersson did get a gap to the remaining folks but already after 5min we could see that something was wrong. The car was running really low which was strange because the tires was of normal size. Marcus did drop back Place after place and just 2min before end he could not defend the5th position with a car which more or less was dragging along the track. This was soooooo disappointing after the superfast pace during the qualification. The weard thing was that none of the top 3 qualifiers made the final..... Ok, what was now the reason for bad performance of the car? We quickly noted that the right front shock absorber was loose in the top mounting position... :-( Racing is sometimes very, very tough.....
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| The lucky guys! |
After some "calm down" time..... both myself and Marcus help out with our friends who made the finals. First we help Magnus Bengtsson in the semifinal which he won easily and then we also helped him during the finals which he won in great style. Ironicaly the finals was run in dry conditions..... Congratulations to Magnus Bengtsson who is the Nordic Champion 2012 in 1:8 class!! Our team mate Bengt Andersson (Serpent 966/NovaRossi) secured the second place. The complete podium:
1. Magnus Bengtsson Sweden Mugen/NR Collari
2. Bengt Andersson Sweden Serpent/NovaRossi
3. Erik Arntzén Norway Xray /NovaRossi
This time we did bite the dust but we take the positive things with us: The pace was really there and has gone up one step since last year. We now seek revench at the next race.... :-)
Until next time,
Marcus/Wolfgang
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