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Down Under - Thursday Day 1 (07/09/2006)
- By:
- Michael Salven
Finally it's getting started....
At 9 o'clock local time the IFMAR 1:10th 200mm On-Road World Championship finally got started. With perfect weather conditions (clear blue sky and approximately 20ºC) there has been a lot of racing today. While the track has been very dusty and slippery at the beginning, conditions got better during the afternoon. At the end of the day the grip was even so high that the cars started rolling over.
All racers had 5 runs of controlled practise today which gave them some time to get used to the track and make the first modifications of their set-up. According to Michael Salven lots of training is absolutely neccesary here as it is a very challenging track with complicated corners.
The challenging track...
The England Park Raceway is a beautiful track with lots of nice and extra features like: internet acces on the track, special tire truing tables (12 V power supply and automatic garbage removal), a special warm up areas to heat up the engines before racing and a scoreboard with information about the position, laps and gap to the car in front.
The pitlane has been modified especially for the Worlds. All mechanics in the pitlane are standing at a lower level so that they can easily pick up the cars and make modifications on the set-up.
Who's there?
By now nearly all racers have arrived and to give you some impression of the starter field, you can find names such as 'Adrien Bertin, Josh Cyrul, Michael Salven, Jilles Groskamp, Mark Green, Keisuke Fukuda, Dario Balestri and Mike Swauger' on the list. So there is going to be some exciting racing waiting for us! Surprisingly for team Serpent also Masao Tanaka is racing with a Serpent car. We are happy to have such a good driver using a Serpent car at the Worlds.
Team Serpent - how are we doing?!
All team Serpent drivers did a lot of testing today. They all needed the time to get used to the track. At the beginning they were struggeling with the conditions on the track but as the traction improved most of them are quite happy now. While Mark Green was good from the beginning on, Jilles Groskamp struggled with frequency problems (due to another driver on the same frequency). Michael Salven had some traction roll problems at the end so he is going to fix his set-up and tires to get a better balance tomorrow. We will keep you posted!
The beautiful drivers stand in Brisbane
extra low pitlane
Top racers waiting for their run!
The Dutch racers..
Team Serpent fixing the cars
Team Mugen
Masao Tanaka with a Serpent car
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