Hello to all 😉
Not a fantastic result, but good performances for our team drivers Léo Arnold, Yoann Bukowski and Nicolas Schwendimann during the GP3F 2014 at Longwy (north of France).
I made the travel to longwy to meet our team drivers, and to help them a bit during the race, as well as to test the E4RS III prototype with Nicolas Schwendimann.
With 150 entries, including some of the best RC drivers in the world, like Ronald Volker, Alexander Hagberg, Marc Fischer, Christopher Krapp and many more, the GP3F was the perfect track and opportunity to test our prototype.
Wake up on Saturday at 2:00 AM to go to Longwy. Arrived at 8:40 at the track, I meet Nicolas and Léo “live” for the first time. They arranged a place for me with the organizer, thank you to them for that.
Nicolas started the practices with his EVO, while I finished to assemble and prepare the prototype. The car was ready at 11:00 AM, and Nicolas started the 3rd and last free practice with the prototype, with a totally improvised setup.
During the run, all the TM drivers was looking on the car of Nicolas, to examine how the car was handling. Feeling of all the team was great: the car looks a lot more incisive and steer more natural, with nice “round” corners.
Nicolas finished this first run with a large smile on his face, and simply made his best performance during that run. So, he decided to continue the race with the prototype instead of the EVO.
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The race in Modified: very difficult to enter the A-final with so many top drivers… this Grand Prix is a bit like an ETS for the modified A-main. Léo Arnold obtained a good 15th place during the qualification, and Nicolas Schwendimann the 22th place (in comparison, Christopher Krapp “only” obtained the 20th place).
The race was difficult for Nicolas, due to the setup adjustments between each runs… for that, he told me “thank you to give me a new car at each run, I always need 3-4 laps to discover how it works”.
During the final runs, Léo had some difficults in run 1 and 2 with some incidents with other drivers, and finished 3rd of the last final, for an overall 16th place, just in front of Christopher Krapp. For Nicolas, the finales was easy, and he obtained 2 second places, for the overall 22th place.
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The race in Stock 10.5: Yoann obtained a great 4th place during the free practice, with his PRT powered E4RS II EVO. This was simply fantastic for us. After that, nothing worked how Yoann wanted it: only 1 good qualification run (6th place), and 4 bad runs… with an overall 14th position. He was off course very disappointed.
During the finales, Yoann finished on the second position of the first run, but had many difficult with his tires in the 2 other runs. He finished 15th of the overall ranking.
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Off course, we all would like to have better results, racing at this level is never easy.
For Nicolas, there was a risk to choose the prototype, especially due to the total absence of training with the new chassis, and also due to the lack of settings parts like the arm holders inserts (only one position was possible, for both rear and front arm holders).
But the comparison with the EVO is interesting, and the car is for sure extremely competitive. We learned a lot during that event, and already made a technical debriefing with the Team Magic staff at Taiwan.
Congratulations for the winners, A-finalists, and sub-finals winners. Congratulations also for the organizers, this race was simply great. Nice job from the club.
Enjoy our pictures 😉
Team Magic car stock 😉
McGyver style car support for Nicolas 😉
E4RS II Evo of Léo
New car support of Léo 😉