Nordic Championship 2012 June 9-10

Last weekend (June 9-10) the Nordic Championship was held in Trollhättan/Sweden. We did really

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.....

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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1st round of Swedish Cup 2012

1st round Swedish Cup 12-13 May

Last weekend the first major race in the classes 1:8IC and 1:10NT took place in Växjö. This is a small but nice track in south east of Sweden. The weather forecast for the weekend was of a really mixed nature, with sunny and relatively warm temperature on Friday and Sunday but Saturday did not look good..... More about that below.

We headed towards Växjö after lunch on Friday and had a nice 250km drive. When we arrived at the track some drivers had already arrived but it was not crowded in any way, so we unloaded the car and prepared for the first outing. We opted to race with the NovaRossi PTS engines from last year at this first event because there has not been any good weather (=read warm) to test the new NovaRossi Keep-On engines.

We started the first test with the same setup as previous weekend tests in Gothenburg. The Serpent 966Evo did look good from the beginning but we were not 100% sure about the pace due to that no timing was available. However we continued with more engine and clutch tests and settings. End of Friday we felt ok with the preparation for the race. Talking about preparation how about this picture from technical inspection… not too much and not to little… just about right! J

Good planning Wolfgang, good planning...

Looking out from the hotel window on Saturday morning did not make us happy.... :-) rain...

When we arrived at the track it was wet and basically it did rain the whole day. 4 qualifying rounds was planned but it was obvious that no one (ok, maybe one or two dare devils) would put a car on the wet track. Finally the race officials cancelled the qualifying sessions and decided to move the 4th qualification round to Sunday. This was a good decision because who wants to race in wet conditions.... Now we could spend some quality time with race friends whom some we haven't seen since last year..... :-)

Sunday looked good with clear blue sky’s and sun (although a little bit cold in the morning). A practice session was scheduled before the first and only qualification session. We took the chance to use this practice session for final tuning of the car before the serious stuff started. Our experience from last year was that the PTS engines with the new cooling head caused us some confusion for how warm the engines should be operated for optimal performance. Anything under 130 degrees would make the engine too rich but it was also very sensitive for fine tuning. There was a big difference in humidity between Friday and Sunday (although the temperature was the same) and because of this we had to tune the engine a lot during Sunday practice but in the end we found it reasonable ok to run around 135-140 degrees.

Having just one qualification round is a bit of a gamble but on the other hand it is the same for all participants.. :-) We felt well prepared but we were not sure about the pace compared to the rest. However the qualification run did go really well, Marcus drove a stable but also fast run. He had to keep the pace up not losing tire temperature and it looked good. The result? Well, how about TQ! A really good start of the 2012 season. It was a close deal as Niklas Johansson (Xray/Picco) was only 0.5 sec behind after a 7 min. Bengt Andersson (Serpent 966/Novarossi PTS) was also running good an took 3rd spot.

After the qualification session we made some analysis of tire wear and we concluded that we needed to do a tire change around 24 min. Our plan was also to refuel every 4 min. The final started good. Marcus and Bengt started with a good pace. Niklas Johansson hade to start from the pit as his engine flamed out during the starting procedure. It took not many laps until the first back markers had to be overtaken. This was a real gamble. Two times Marcus was suffering by being hit by back markers but overall drivers did give each other room during overtaking. After 10 min Marcus did just briefly hit a curb and on power the car flipped. Bengt was now able to go into the lead but Marcus could quickly gain grounds by some good driving. Tires were also getting better when the size was more "right" compared to beginning. Bengt had an incident with a back marker and this gave the opportunity for Marcus to take the lead again. Around the 20min mark Marcus wanted to change tires. This was slightly earlier than originally planned. Tire change went reasonably well. Niklas Johansson was now able to take the lead as Bengt Andersson was involved in another incident.

Some happy faces from the podium

The 2nd set of tires was not good.... at the time we had no clue why... Well, 2nd place is not bad and there is still plenty of time left of the final. However the luck should soon turn around....   when there was 10 min left of the final the engine flamed out and also hit the glowplug.... :-(

Quickly change the glowplug and refuel but considering a 1min 37 sec stop on a 14 sec lap you lose places.... Marcus was able to give a good fight and retook 3rd place when there was 5min remaining of the final. Niklas Johansson drove a good final and was awarded 1st place. His pace was hard to beat this time. Well done and well deserved! Bengt Andersson ended up 2nd and Marcus on 3rd making the complete podium.

Overall we are satisfied with this first race of the season considering the good performance in qualification and 3rd place overall.

We now have a two weeks break from racing as I am heading to US for a two week business trip and Marcus is heading towards Netherlands doing aerodynamic measurement on a Eco Marathon race vehicle.

Until next time!

Marcus and Wolfgang

Looong winter... could not start better by visiting NovaRossi in Italy!

Visit to NovaRossi in Italy!
(Written by Wolfgang Lindner)

A couple of weeks ago I and Marcus got an offer from Klas Runesson at Hobby Produkter (Swedish distributor for NovaRossi) which we could not refuse….. J “Do you want to join me for a travel to NovaRossi in Italy?”. Well, you can imagine that we did not have to think too long! Actually, it took 0.1s and then we answered “YES!!”

NovaRossi HQ and Factory

So, off we went with Ryanair flight from Gothenburg Thursday 20^th. Destination was Bergamo in Italy. NovaRossi HQ is located in Montecelli Brusati which is just 45km away from Bergamo Airport. We thought that we would meet the spring in Italy but the weather was really bad… L A lot of rain and thunderstorms. Well, you cannot get everything in life and this time we did not go to race so the rain was not a problem… J We picked up our rental car and headed towards our hotel.

Friday morning we drove over to NovaRossi and was welcomed by Mr NovaRossi himself, Cesare Rossi, his wife Graziosa Rossi and sales manager Malick  Diop.

From the beginning we felt us really welcome. Almost directly we went out in the factory for a “tour Grande” of the complete facility. We did see a lot, from raw materials, casting and all the processing up to finished engines. For obvious reasons we cannot show any photos but I can tell you that Mr. Rossi and Mr. Diop did an outstanding job showing us the different high precision machines, people manufacturing all the parts/assembling of engines. As you might imagine there are a lot of machines which are semi or full automated BUT also some high quality manual work done by the NovaRossi staff. We learnt that many of the 60 employees have been working +20 years for NR. The lady producing glow plugs has been with NovaRossi for 28 years and the gentleman mounting piston and conrod was doing his 38th year at NovaRossi. I believe that this shows the passion and loyalty to the company and the management team.

In today global world it is very common that companies outsource part of their business, like producing parts, to other companies in low cost countries. This is not the case at NovaRossi as almost 100% is made in house. From our understanding the only parts produced outside is the inner/outer ring for the engine main ball bearing and the balls. The assembly of the main ball bearing is then made in-house. The interesting thing is that Mr. Rossi himself takes part in the production! He checks the tolerances for the main ball bearings. I must say that I like this man. This is so very different from the corporate world I earn my living…. J

After the factory tour we got also a glimpse into the workshop where engines are breaked-in.  Mr Frederico Sala, engineer at NovaRossi, showed use the facility which is a rather small room, with simple but effective tools and fixtures. We had a rather interesting discussion about how to break in engines. I will not reveal any details but what I can say is that we, at least I, are too conservative when it comes to rpm and engine temperature….. J

Excellent lunch with amazing people

After the fantastic tour of the factory we went for lunch in a beautiful restaurant in the Italian country side. What a team of people there was round the table! Mr. and Mrs. Rossi, their daughter Erica, Mr. Columbini (NovaRossi distributor in Italy), Mr. Diop, Klas, Marcus and myself.

During the lunch we had a lot of interesting discussions about the development of the RC car sport from early days until now, where are we heading, what can be done to bring back the fun into the sport and, maybe most importantly, how to manage and handle the environmental areas (nitro, tire additives and more). It is interesting to hear that NovaRossi for a number of years have suggested to the governing bodies how to eliminate nitro and still have high performance engines. For me it is rather clear that governing bodies need not just to listen to RC industry companies, they need to setup cooperation to set the scene for the future!! Not sure if you all remember this but we did suggest to EFRA a new constitution 2009 which also covered the area how EFRA and RC industry should cooperate. I hope that will happen in the near future and I am still optimistic. Let us see…. :-)

We also talked about the challenge from the globalization of businesses around the world. More and more manufacturer moves the production to Asia to reduce the cost structure. We believe that NovaRossi will never do this because they have a very skilled and dedicated staff that has a tremendous knowledge. How can you replace that when moving somewhere else? I also get the feeling that NovaRossi sets high level of social responsibility for their employees who all live close to the factory. Maybe something for others companies to learn from….

After returning from a fantastic lunch the time was reserved for business discussion between NovaRossi and Hobby Produkter. As you might understand, I will not writing anything about those discussions here…. J

Time flies when you have fun and at 17:00 it was time for saying Good Bye to our new friends in Italy but before we went back to Bergamo in our super-duper 1,2L Ford Fiesta we had a photo session:

From left to right: Wolfgang, Klas, Malick Diop, Mrs. Rossi,

Marcus and Mr. Rossi 

It is really hard to put words on the feeling we had when leaving NovaRossi factory. As you probably understand from this report we were very, very pleased with our visit and the time Mr. and Mrs. Rossi, Malick Diop and NovaRossi staff spent with us. Imagine yourself; here you have the management team of the world leading engine manufacturer spending 7-8 hours with us during the visit. What can we say? Very, very impressive!!

The last night we changed hotel and moved into the center of Bergamo. This is a fascinating city with and old center really worth a visit. Excellent views, building and super good food.

We, Marcus, Klas and Wolfgang, hope to meet the great and dedicated people from NovaRossi soon!!

Until Next Time,

Ciao

Wolfgang, Marcus and Klas

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

Strong performance by the Team Serpent Sweden/HP

Team Serpent Sweden showed a strong performance at the latest Swedish championship! In 1:10 it was a complete 1-2-3 podium for Serpent with Per-Ola Hård winning, Mikael Fransson on 2nd place and Tomas Andersson on 3rd place. Staffan Karlsson, also Team Serpent Sweden, taking the 4th spot.

In 1:8 it was almost the same with Mikael Fransson in 1st place and Marcus Lindner in 2nd.

Some happy faces!

However, the competition will probably plan for revench at the next race so we have to be prepared! :-)

The dynamic duo!

No words necessary.... :-)

Back in Business!

The Swedish Championship in 1:8/1:10 Track plus 1:10 EP took place in Växjö. With the 3 classes the number of drivers was ok.

As you all know we struggled a lot during the EC in Luxembourg (if not, read the previous blogs). I am happy to tell you that we are back in business with a good 2nd place at the Swedish Championship! It was a little bit of struggle during the qualification as we missed 2 out of 4 qualification due to mechanical issues but in the end we qualified in 4th place. As we still are running the old format of racing (with direct qualifiers) we had a safe spot in the final. The weather forecast for Sunday was not the best.... rain, rain and more rain. Unfortunately the weather forecast did turn out to be correct (which is unusual...). So, we had to prepare the car for rain.

The final started really good! The setup and engine worked really good. We opted for not running with any special "Insbox" as it had stopped to rain. In the beginnig this was a good choice. Mikael Fransson and Marcus pulled away from the rest. 10 min into the final it started to rain again and the engine started to pick up water and caused it to stop. We quickly changed to another "insbox" adjusted for rain and now it was going better. However, we lost several laps..... and was down to 6th place. Not good but the car once again was running good and we could take car by car. When it was 3min left of the final Marcus was up in 2nd place and could safely bring the car to the finish line. Mikael Fransson once again made a flawless final and became the Swedish Champion and Marcus on 2nd place making it a Serpent 1-2. Björn Ohlson/Mugen taking 3rd place.

In the 1:10 it was a big battle between Mikael Fransson, Per-Ola Hård during the final. In the end it was Per-Ola Hård who got a well deserved victory with Mikael Fransson in 2nd place and Tomas Andersson 3rd place making it a Serpent 1-2-3

In 1:10 EP Alexander Hagberg was a class of his own and it was no surprise to find him on top of the podium. Mattias Johansson taking 2nd and Carl Rönnbäck 3rd.

Racing can be hard and tiring... :-) Martin Åberg from Trollhättan did take a power nap before the finals.... :-)

And my driver was also tired when driving home from Växjö. As usual sleeping with the mouth wide open. :-)

Until next time!

Wolfgang/Marcus