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Down Under - Wednesday Day 7 (12/09/2006)

By:: Michael Salven

Gentlemen please start your engines!

And here we go again... Some minutes ago the third qualification round of Group B has been finished at the beautiful race track here in Brisbane. Today the weather is fine. Eventually the sun is shining and luckily there is less (cold!) wind than yesterday. This morning the track seems to be a little bit slower than during the last heats being run yesterday evening. For sure, this will change until the afternoon as racing will continue...

To keep you informed, here are first three top qualifiers after round 3:

1. Chris Tosolini 34 laps, 10:08.00 min
2. Takaaki Shimo 34 laps, 10:09.26 min
3. Adrien Bertin 34 laps, 10:09.91 min

Best Serpent racer is still Jilles Groskamp which is now on the 12 th position. While Fabio Domanin, Scotty Gray and Mark Green could improve their times, they all did not have clean runs. Also Michael Salven has had bad luck and found himself leaving the drivers stand after 4 minutes. All in all there is space for improvement, so let's go and get it!

Cool - Part 1

In the meantime I was sniffling around in the pits to find the hottest sunglasses on the track.

And guess what..it was not easy to choose but I found them..

Cool - Part 2

While searching for the hottest sunglasses I found this starterbox...definitely the coolest on the track!

Results after Qualifying round 4

Round 4 of qualifying of Group B has just been finished with no changes in the top positions. So the top 4 qualifier are:

1.   Chris Tosolini, 34 laps 10:08.00
2.   Takaaki Shimo, 34 laps 10:09.26
3.   Adrien Bertin, 34 laps 10:09.91
4.   Hideo Kitazawa, 34 laps 10:15.04

From team Serpent Toshiyuki Iwamoto has improved his time with now being in the 11th position (33 laps, 10:03.07 min). Next to him also Scotty Gray showed a good performance by racing 33 laps in 10:05.28 min (16 th position).

Again most of the other team Serpent racers had bad luck. Mark Green ran out of fuel after 8 minutes because his pitman had problems refueling the car when the tie wrap broke during the pitstop. A broken throttle servo made a sudden end to a very quick fourth run of Jilles Groskamp. Fabio Domanin had to come into the pits for a stop and go penalty after bad refueling of his pitman. So we just hope for more luck tomorrow!!

Interview with Gerhard Kandelhart

While group A is racing their third and fourth qualification rounds we had the opportunity to have a little chat with Kandi, our team Serpent racer from Austria.

Interviewer: How are you doing today?
Gerhard: I have already raced two times. I feel better today because the sun is shining. At least I do not need to use artificial sun to show my relatives at home that I have been to Australia.

Interviewer: How is racing until now?
Gerhard: My feeling is good. My car today is much better than yesterday. I am much faster so I feel better.

Interviewer: How do you like the track?
Gerhard: The track is ok. It is very bumpy.

Interviewer: Who is your biggest competitor?
Gerhard: Melanie because she deleted my Ipod :-(……….. (comment of the interviewer: I am so embarrassed!!)

Interviewer: Who is going to win these Worlds?
Gerhard: Serpent off course!! When it’s raining it is going to be me :-).

Interviewer: What are you going to eat tonight?
Gerhard: Pasta at Fasta Pasta.

Happy Birthday!

Today is the birthday of two European racers, Francesco Tironi and Rick Vrielijnck. So we enjoyed a very good piece of cake...mmm...

Congratualions and Happy Birthday to both of them!

Interview with Rene Cornella

Rene has been the designer of the 720 and he is racing here at the Worlds. So let's hear what he has got to tell us about his race.

Interviewer: How are you doing today?
Rene: Better than yesterday and especially way better than the day before yesterday.

Interviewer: How is racing until now?
Rene: This is a good question. It is not as good as I want it to have. I still have some hope to improve.

Interviewer: How do you like the track?
Rene: It is a very different to track to the European style. It is very bumpy and it seems to be very narrow when you are standing at the drivers stand. Actually it is not as narrow as it seems…so the corners are hard to see.

Interviewer: Who is your biggest competitor?
Rene: Everyone who is qualified in front of me.

Interviewer: Who is going to win these Worlds?
Rene: I have hope but I won’t tell……

Interviewer: What are you going to eat tonight?
Rene: It does not matter…I need some alcohol :-) !

Conclusion after 4 runs of qualification

When we look at the overall results after 4 rounds of qualification we are a little bit dissapointed as team Serpent on these Worlds. We expected a stronger performance after the good results at the Euro's and winning the American National title some weeks ago. So what are the problems?

Basically all Serpent drivers are facing the same problem. To go fast you need to have enough steering. When driving a set-up that enables enough steering the car traction rolls faster than the ones of our competitors. Next to this we have a lack of experience on tracks with this kind of traction. Especially the Japanese drivers know what to do with their cars under these kind of circumstances.

So what we do now is learning by doing as fast as we can....unluckily the weather did not help with that as we lost two days of practice because of the rain. We keep up working hard and communicating good within the team to improve our knowledge and performance.

Start of qualifying round 3

Wow...

Wow....

Fabio Domanin's car

Kandi in the Snake pits

Birthday 'kids'

Rene Cornella

Discussing set up