Rob Janssen, Richard Arts and Ronald Arts participated to the MRC Vianen Speed Week-end race.
Rob won the race, while Richard finished third and Ronald fifth. Great result !
Original race report from Rob Janssen:
This weekend MRC Vianen held their first Speed Weekend as opening of the 2016/2017 indoor season. They did an amazing job by organizing it and many people attended this race. For me it was a good weekend.
On Saturday in controlled practise the car worked great from the start. Everybody needed to use same 17.5 motor but some guys had a newer version whit a lot more motor timing on it which made it a little unfair. But ok, we needed to deal with it as in the rules there was only a article number mentioned, not which version, how many timing etc.
Unfortunately due to this i was not able to do fastest lap of the run but over 6 minutes the car was easy and predictable to drive so I felt confident to go into qualification.
In both Q1 and Q2 on Saturday I was able to make TQ runs. The car improved a little which made it little faster but still good to drive on the increasing grip on the track.
On Sunday morning Q3 and Q4 were held. In Q3 I again was able to make a TQ run which secured TQ for the finals for me.
In Q4 I was able to improve my fastest lap to a 9.9 instead of 10.0. But short after that I hit a car which was on his roof on the middle on the track. My battery flew out so my run was over.
Final 1 was a bit unlucky as I drove into a guy which I was lapping. This costed my first spot for the moment. After some close racing I was able to come upfront again and take the win. It was hard as in the infield I came really close to Wesley in front of me, but on the straight he pulled away lots of meters so lap after lap I came close in the infield but again lost it on the straight. But at the end I was able to catch him.
Final 2 started with a mistake from myself by rolling over in corner 1. I battled back to first but eventually rolled it over again and just missed the starting line and missing a lap on the computer. In the end I drove in front but due to my missed lap I ended up second.
The last final eventually went great. From start to end I was able to put it together and didn’t gave away the win. Wesley was close behind the first few laps bu he made to many mistakes. At the end I lapped him.
At the end I won this weekend and felt really happy with the handling of the car. Richard came in 3rd and Ronald, who was using my older car, came in 5th; so 3 TM cars in top 5 !
Original race report from Richard Arts:
On Saturday the open practice started on relative low grip “ETS” carpet. From the start of the open practice, the setup worked good and I was able to run quick laps.
During the timed practice rounds the grip would come up and I had to adjust the setup to keep the car on four wheels. This worked out OK and I could put together 3 quick laps for the re-seeding.
The first 2 of 4 qualifying rounds however were not so great. The rear end was unstable in the chicane, sliding around and not predictable where the car would exit the corner. Having scored 2 bad Q’s, the last 2 qualifiers on Sunday were going to be important to make the A-main.
Sunday started again with some open practice, and I used this to test some changes to the tire-treatment and setup.
Tire-prep seemed to be the big difference, and the reduced pickup on the tires made it fun to drive again. Also a change in the rear shock-oil and diff made the car made the car more planted in the hairpin turns. For Q3 & Q4 I still was careful to not mess-up, but the pace was there again, and I scored a 3rd and 2nd. This meant I moved up from 8th spot after Q1&Q2 to 3rd.
The start of the finals are always a gamble, but all 3 finals I came off the line without issues in the first couple of corners. It was clear that Wesley and Rob were a bit too quick to hang on too. But with the close racing they had, I tried to stay as close as possible. Waiting for a chance for me to sneak by when one of them made a mistake or rolled the car. This worked out in the last final, as Wesley was struggling a bit more with rolling his car. After 2 times finishing 3rd, the last final I finished 2nd.
Overall this resulted in a 3rd place.
Switching to carpet and its typical build up in grip-level takes a bit more to get used to, but for a first race of the indoor season I am pretty happy with the result.
Complete ranking:
1. Rob Janssen – Team Magic E4RS III Plus / HRC Racing
2. Wesley van Dijken
3. Richard Arts – Team Magic E4RS III Plus / HRC Racing
4. Martijn Cornelissen
5. Ronald Arts – Team Magic E4RS III Plus / HRC Racing
6. Elibert Sievers
7. Martijn Spaans
8. Nick Nerrings
9. Eric Mulder
10. Bert Geurts
11. Jasper Oldenhof
12. Thomas van Hout
13. Jaco Bouman
14. Maarten Coenen
15. Johannes Voerman
16. Hampy Janssen
17. Joop Voorn
18. Kees Spoon
19. Marco Van Leeuwen
20. Wesley van Aalst
21. Mark de Munnik
22. Patricia Wessels
23. Ab Dufourné
24. Jan Kraanen