Rob Janssen dominated the third round of Dutch Nationals, at RC Hotwheels club at Deventer. Rob set the best lap, obtained the TQ and won the race, while his team mate Richard Arts secured a very nice second place on the podium.
Original report from Rob Janssen:
Last weekend we had our third round of Nationals at Rc Hotwheels in Deventer. Together with Richard I went there saturday morning to do some laps as in the afternoon the weather should be not good. Unfortunately only a few guys attended this race, it’s a shame so less people do Nationals here 🙁 !
I did like 6 or 7 runs to get to know the track a little better and improve the car for this particular track. The car felt really good and could do my laps with good confidence and as well good laptimes. The biggest improvement I felt was changing from HPI springs to the Team Magic linear at the rear and the Team Magic progressice in front. I also tried both linear front and rear and progressive front and rear but felt the combination of linear at the rear and progressive in front felt the best !
Before the weekend I changed the roll centers under front arms by putting 0.25mm under front and 0.10mm under the rear of the front arms. It felt like the car moves his weight faster to the front when going off throtlle or when touching the brake. I give it a try also at my local club in two weeks.
On sunday morning, race day, the track was a little wet. In Q1 still a few corners were wet. I decided to do 3 laps to feel the car on new tires.
In Q2 I went for it. With good results. The time to beat at that moment was a 28L in 7.08 (fast lap of 15.0) of Sybrand de Boer.
After a few laps i heard the timekeeper saying I did a 14,6 lap so I knew it would be a good TQ run, and it was !
28L in 7.00, just missed the 29 laps. After all 3 rounds nobody came close to my time. Richard came in to starth fourth in the finals.
In final 1 I had a good start and was able to make a little gap on the nr 2 and 3, Sybrand and Rick. They were in heavy batlle with eachother with gave me the opportunity to drive away from them.
In final 2 Rick was a lot faster then Sybrand and passed him in lap 2. He was all 7 minutes within a second of me but never came close enough to make a move. I was not driving it on the max as I felt it was not needed, just brought it in safe.
Final 3 was a little crazy. In my warm up laps I heard something in the car when accellerating. Like a belt or maybe gears in the diff. The first few minutes the car drove ok but not great, I was far of my pace. I had a big lead from the start, but was not able to drive my good pace. At the end, Richard passed me to win the final 3.
I came in second and when picking up my car afterwards I found out my front belt was flipped. That would have been the reason why I was off pace and explained the weird noise of my car. At the end It didn’t really matter as I allready won the first two finals.
Original report from Richard Arts:
Started on Saturday with my setup from 2 weeks ago, “only” change is, the Nationals use Sorex tires instead of the Volante’s. Tires and track conditions was a big difference, as the car was sliding a lot on 4 wheels. Changing additive improved a bit, but still not good enough. Played around with dampers and roll-centers. Still not the improvement I was looking for. Tried a different set of Sorex, and that turned out to ease the problem a bit at least. Sadly the training was cut short due to some rain, so I decided to pack-up and go home early to clean and prepare the car.
On Sunday, the track still had some damp spots in the corners from the night’s rain. But I needed to get a “feel” with some decent tires on the car. Track was still a bit slippery, but car felt better and more predictable.
Q1 still had some damp corners, so I only did 2 laps, and rubbed in the set of race tires.
Q2 resulted in a 4th time, as the car was a bit loose with the fresh race tires. And that took me too long to get comfortable with.
For Q3 I made some small changes to the rear dampers which made the car more stable, but took away too much rotation through the corner.
So, 4th on the grid for the finals, and took the gamble for some more drastic setup change, closer to the setup Rob was running.
1st final was a big disappointment. With a really unstable rear-end of the car, I ended up 8th. Knowing this had to be some mechanical issue, I inspected the drive-train, and the rear diff I just put in, appeared to be the issue (this turned out to be an assembly error).
Not taking too much risk with the setup for the 2nd final I finished 4th with too much understeer. Knowing I needed a big improvement, I decided to change tire treatment, bit harder rear spring, and a bit more camber. All or nothing, to try for a podium finish.
3rd final had a freak start. Right before the start signal, apparently something drop on the floor wit a loud bang. A couple of drivers blipped the throttle, and had a jumpstart.
With the resulting stop-and-go penalties for those drivers, I could make up 2 spots. The setup changes seamed to work great for me, as the car felt great. I was slowly gaining on Rob, but at the end I was gaining too quick to be normal. It turned out Rob was having an issue with his front drive belt, and he was basically running in RWD mode. In the last minute I was able to overtake, and finish 1st.
For the end result this meant that 3 drivers had a tie for 2nd place overall with 5 points. Me being the lucky guy, as the decider is the fastest final result.
So after a difficult day, I’m happy to get the setup to work really good in the 3rd final, and take home an unexpected 2nd place.
Overall Results:
1. Rob Janssen – Team Magic E4RS III Plus / HRC Racing
2. Richard Arts – Team Magic E4RS III Plus / HRC Racing
3. De Boer Sybrand
4. Rick van den Akker
5. Fokke Groen
6. Tim Streefkerk
7. Fons Stabel
8. Andre Heskamp
9. Martijn Spaans
10. Jeroen Streefkerk
11. Jochen Essl