Final race for the season....

Last weekend was the final race for the 2011 season which took place at the super fast track in Örebro. We arrived on Friday afternoon for some good practice rounds. We definitely need it as we had not race for almost 1,5 month due to other commitments. Marcus was down in Italy for a race with the Formula Student car and I had to make the backlog of things at home to become shorter.... but that is another story... :-)

Chalmers 2011 FS Team

For once we had nice weather which has been rare this season. So far almost all races have been disturbed with rain but at least this one started well... The club Örebro RBC had really prepared the race weekend well with a track which had super tracktion! and the tire wear was not bad either so this was looking good. Already the first laps the 966 Evo felt really good. We had a little bit issues with the gearbox but that was soon fixed. Also the engine, NovaRossi Flash PTS did work great although we did run it warmer than normal but it did not seem to impact the performance or wear. We did really look forward to qualifying on Saterday.

WTF! Ice!

It was a little bit of a chock when we did get up on Saterday morning because I had to clean the windshield of the car from ice!! Here we are in middle of September and we already have sub-zero degrees in the morning.... hm.... interesting. Here is a picture from the track with solid water (=ice) on a fence. However the sun did rise and we did actually get decent temperature during the day.

The day started with 2 practice rounds and the car was still running really good. We only made some small adjustments to the dampers and anti-roll bars. The car and engine combo was looking good! 

Time for Q1! Good start and good pace was the key words for Q1 as it was expected that the cooler conditions in the morning would be key for a good result. It was Marcus and Bengt Andersson who was quickest with only 1-2 seconds distance during the first half of Q1. After the refueling Bengt did make a small mistake and went of the track. Marcus did drive very good and set a good time and was on provisional pole.

In Q2 Marcus did a small mistake similar to Bengt in Q1 but overall the laptimes was not the same as in the morning so the raising temperature did have an effect on laptimes..... In  Q3 Marcus was still fastest but 2 second off the result from Q1. So, it was up to the final qualifier to see who was to bring home the 2 extra points for the TQ spot..... Mikael Fransson had some issues during the first qualifiers but in the last he got a grip on the situation and it was exciting as Marcus and Mikael were running similar laptimes. Even the "old" mechanics (me and Stig Fransson) got their act together with good refueling... :-) 

Very, very close.... :-)

As it turned out in the end it was only 0.2 seconds which separated Mikael and Marcus after 7min of qualifying! That can not be many cm in lenght.... :-) 

Mikael took the TQ and that was well done. Marcus was also satisfied with the qualifying in second spot. Even if we did not get the TQ position  Marcus did have the 2nd, 3rd and 4th fastest qualifying. Not bad at all! :-) Stefan Andersson/Shephard took 3rd spot and Patrick Sahlin/Mugen 4th spot (yes, we are running the old format with direct qualifiers).
The weather forecast for Sunday was not really promising... :-( What a surprise..... Even if there was not much rain expected hoping for a complete dry final day would be like winning on Lotto.... and you folks probably know how difficult that is....
Just when we went from the hotel 08:00 in the morning it started to rain..... sh-t! Ok, it was some time until we had the final practice and the final so still some hope, even if it was scrinking....

For the final practice it was a damp track, not really good for any tires. We concentrated to test 3 different sets of tires (1 dry and 2 set of wets). To be honest, nothing really worked good.... so we had to hope for a dry track at the time for the final.

Unfortunately the track did not dry until or during the finals. From the first laps we did struggle with getting any decent grip. For some reasons our tires did not work as well as the competition but we fighted to the bitter end and made the 6th place. Mikael Fransson/Serpent 966 drove a solid race and took first place with Christoffer Hedlund/Xray on 2nd place and Stefan Anderssson/Shephard 3rd.
For the total Swedish Cup results (5 races) it was a little bit more enjoying for us! Bengt Andersson/Serpent 966 was the overall winner, Marus Lindner/Serpent 966 2nd and Niklas Johansson/Mugen MRX-5 on 3rd.

So, this was the final race of the season. It is now time to do some analysis of the 2011 season to understand what can be improved for 2012. There are some crazy(?) ideas also for some "Lindner Upgrades" on the car but you have to stay tuned during the winter to get some sneak preview before the 2012 season :-)

Until next time,

Marcus/Wolfgang