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2006 European championship 200mm (23/08/2006)

By:: Mark Green
Linked to:: Serpent 720 1/10th scale 200mm, Serpent 720 07 1/10th scale 200mm, Serpent 720 08 1/10th scale 200mm, Serpent 720 -09 1/10th scale 200mm

Week of racing

With the biggest entry for a Euro's,around 140 drivers this meeting would be run over a whole week starting on monday with control practise,but the weather decided to put stop to everyone's fun and most left the track to hope for better weather.

Tuesday.

Arrive to track and its dry so got a good days testing,but with 140 drivers we were limted to 4 10min runs,so i started with the set up from the GP,the car felt good right away,the rear a little loose but still a good feeling from the car,i added a little more rear toe in and now the car was really good.I also tried gearing going from 17/59 to 18/61 this was better for my 1/8th driving style..

Wednesday

Really nice sunny day and as the grip came up,my car just seem to get better,i tested,the new mega ZX DSII is a very good engine it has a little more bottom end and a little more top speed.I also tried pipes and ended the day with the 2607 mega pipe set,At the same time i lowered the front top wishbone (higher front roll center),this made the car very good at the tight parts of the track with fast change of direction but gave it a little bit of high speed exit understeer,which i fixed by making the rear roll bar harder..

Thursday

Cloudy but the track was dry and grip still good,Today i tested tyres,i had been using 37front and 40 rear,i changed to 40 front and 42 rear,the car was same speed but was really easy to drive,the rear feeling very safe,added to that was tyre ware was less.

Friday/Saturday

Qualifying was a bit messed up with track being wet then dryed out,so grip was changing all the time.
The end result after 4 rounds
1st.Michael Salven 720/mega-DSII 20L.513 record
2nd.Mark Green 720/mega-DSII 20L.520
3rd Rick Vrielinck 19L.501
4th Jilles Groskamp 720/MF 19L.502

These guys are the lucky ones to go straight into the main final,with the weather looking bad for sunday,it was a good feeling,

Very Very Wet

Sunday

If its wet in england then i can tell you that it was much wetter at the MACH track,i forgot to take my camera on sunday so i have no pictures to show how wet it was.There are some good shots on www.3hobby.net .At times the track was under the water.The staff that ran the meeting should feel really good at how well they coped with the conditions,and the marshals who looked like they had just got out of the shower with there clothes on.

The Bump Up Guys

I think some of the best drives came from the lower finals.Adam Catchpole who made all the way to the semi final from 1/32,and Jamal Ainul who bump up 2 or 3 finals great drives guys,in very hard conditions..

Hard To Belive

After all the lower finals finished it stopped raining and the track started to dry,but even though the track was dry the grass was still under water and the curbs would hold water in them.

Final

Due to time final was shorten to 30mins

The warm up showed that the track was very hard to drive,grip was low and the grass very wet so to stay on the black stuff was a must.At the start it was very close with every driver not wanting to move of line,my car had a good feeling but would hook and spin if i went even a inch of line,i had quite a few spins which would take you on to the outside wet bits and then you have 2 laps trying to clean them up,but i stayed on track and made to the end,it was very hard work but worth it in the end with 2nd place.

Final result.
1st.Dario Balestri
2nd.Mark Green
3rd.Darren Johnson

Once again we have two UK drivers on the podium with Darren,showing how competitive the uk is for 200mm racing.

I would like to thank all the people who helped me. Matt Baker,Rene Cornella,Michael Salven,everyone at serpent.

My Sponsors,

Serpent,Mega,Sanwa,GRP,rw racing,alan stacey bodyshells,

Big GB Team

Lots of nice shells

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