Former 1/10 Touring Stock 10.5 European Champion Rémi Callens share his feeling and provided us a full report of his 2016 French National Cup race at Evry.
My hardest French Cup
The French cup took place in Evry the past weekend, I made the displacement after some weeks without driving but with a great desire to ride!
I arrived on Friday afternoon to do some practices to learn that track where I never went before.
My first practice run was slow, I had to learn each corners of the track and don’t make mistakes, the car felt good immediately, easy to drive with a good grip. For the second practice run, I decided to let the same setup and accelerate the pace, I did some good laps but unfortunately I got thermal break after 3 minutes. It was already 34 degrees and it this weather was expected all weekend…
I changed my controller setup for the next practice but it was the same thing, always cut off after 2 minutes, controller and motor was so hot, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t do 5 minutes in a row. Then I decided to change my controller, I run 4 minutes then my car stopped again, this time was my battery, this one looked like an inflated balloon, certainly due to the hot temperature…
These problems lasted until Saturday afternoon, Saturday morning I just was able to do only 7 laps during 5 controlled practices of 5 minutes, it was a disaster and I lost 1 controller and 2 batteries during the morning, I didn’t want to continue, qualifications would begin and I didn’t run more than 2 laps in a row ! I already changed 4 times my combo ESC-motor and it was always the same result.
But Yoann (Bukowski) helped me, he gave me a motor and lent me a controller, I also changed my receiver and try my last chance in qualifications. 5 minutes! I made 5 minutes! Sure we try with a very very soft controller setup, with a stock speed, but I was able to do a good time anyway to be in A-main. The last two qualifications was the same, we just tried to increase slightly boost and timing on controller to gain speed but principal was to finish each qualification run.
After Saturday qualifications we decided to do some test with different controller setup and finally, two hours later, we found a relative good setup.
Sunday morning was better, I increased my lap time but car setup was not at the top, I got height position on started grid but I knew that I could be faster in finales.
During the finales I tried to do my best, I finished fourth on the A1 and fifth on A2, during both I took the third provisional position but race facts made me lose that place. Unfortunately I had to stop in A3 due to a steering problem. My car was finally amazing during finales, Team Magic really does a great job to offer the best possible car and it feels on the track!
I started eighth and finally finished fifth, not bad with only 4 complete runs before.
In conclusion, I’m a bit disappointed of this race because I know I could have been faster without all these problems and maybe drive for an eventual third position, Cyril and Thomas was too fast this weekend to hope for a better place.
So, congratulations to Cyril for his victory and Thomas for his second place! You did a fantastic job guys!
Thanks to Team Magic for their support and see you soon!
Rémi Callens
Ps: I finally found my problem, my battery connector was damaged and this created some troubles of temperatures…