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AMT Cup Friedrichshafen big success !! (05/11/2006)

By:: Eoghain O'Briain
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

Indoor Racing at it's best !!

Dear Racefriends,

Last weekend 3-5 November was the AMT 200mm Cup held in the Beautiful place at the Bodensee Friedrichshafen. We were looking forward to this race since we knew we could attend this event, some weeks ago. The venue is great with a very nice Modelling show with all aspects of radio control and static models. Serpent used this event to officialy show the F180 production car to the public, at the booth were we have to thank the Lechner (Fun and Drive) family and 2-Speed for making a great display of the car and Serpent products!
For the AMT Cup there was a limit in entrants to 40 drivers, and there was a waiting list also so there is a lot of intrest to go race on this nice event !

On the same weekend there was also a KWC Euro championship being held so the total amount of drivers was 100+ !

When we arrived on the friday morning we saw a very nice big track set up made out of wooden plates with special paint on it to look realy good, the lay out is fast and challenging enough to be carefull not to break your car.. Speeds were high and traction was improving all the time so some sub 15 second laps were posible. Hot drivers were, Kandelhardt, Tomaschko Cornella, Baier, Huber, Pietsch, Giesa, Hamerl, Eberle and many more !

Friday practise and Qualifying

Initialy the track was a bit dusty and there was not much grip but afetr 2 hours of driving in several classes grip went up and got up to traction roll level allready.
Practise was over at 12:00 hours and most of us had 2 rounds of practise, then 2 rounds of controlled practise and later in the afternoon the first official Qualifying round The pace set by Gerhard Kandelhardt was a 20 lapper in 5.06 and he was looking very happy with the result !!
Also With me on the 4th spot it was a good result first time out with the 720 ! but i had to improve my time to be able to hold on to this position, since faster times were expected on the Saturday..

Saturday Qualifying

After a good night sleep (after we skipped the previous night, driving over 850 km) we were confident to find some seconds, The time of Gerhard was never touched again and he kept his well earned pole position, almost every other driver did nd so the heat was turned on Kandi but he did enough in his Friday run to secure the pole, i also improved my time to stay 4th, needless to say i was very happy with my direct quallifying into the final. It was close very close, the top 10 positions were only 3.5 seconds apart and it all looked very exciting for the finals to be run on Sunday !

Top 4:

#1 Gerhard Kandelhardt Serpent 720/Mega ZX
#2 Manuel Huber Mtx4/Picco
#3 Philip Eberle Mtx4/Nova
#4 Rob Kuijper Serpent 720/Mega ZX

Some set up indications:
Tyres 40 shore all round 58mm front/59mm rear
Diff front 80.000 W
Diff Rear 30.000 W
Shocks: 35 W 3 holes
Springs: Blue front / Red Rear
Gearing: 17/22,60/56
Body: Stratus 3.1

Many different set ups were tried, but in the end the most differances were in the car being easy and not so fast or being more difficult and fast, for the finals many thought was taken to find a good set up for longer runs !

Sunday Finals

The last day of the event saw a buzzingly busy pit area with everybody preparing their material tyres etc, since ther was virtualy no tyre wear and it took a lot of time to run in a new set, i choosed to do so in the practise for the directly qualified drivers, the car was not handling as good as the day before.. I changed tyres to the set used for the qualifying and hoped for the best.

At the start of the 30 minute final Kandi was leading followed closely by Huber and Eberle, followed by René Cornella and Tomaschko, after almost 10 minutes the top 8 was in the same lap !
I was out short before that period after a touch from another car i stripped the 2nd speed gear and 2 lap after that i managed to make a costly mistake taking all my left over hopes away, and had to retire. Meanwhile the battle continoud and kandi had a problem afer refueling, Eberle had some problems as did Huber afte his body got stuck, now it was Daniel Tomaschko leading and Huber in second and René in third, this stayed till the last minute, but drama was in the air after René's car was pushed by another driver losing two places to be 5th in the end and Günter Mürdter took third place.daniel Tomaschko took a very deserved win after a great drive being flawless throughout the whole 30 minutes and setting the fastest lap of the final also !

Top 10 After the final:

#1 Daniel Tomaschko Serpent 720/ Mega ZX
#2 Manuel Huber mtx4/Picco
#3 Günter Mürdter gpx4/OS
#4 Werner Bergbauer gpx4/OS
#5 René Cornella Serpent 720/Mega ZX
#6 Gerhard Kandelhardt Serpent 720/Mega ZX
#7 Andreas Hamerl rrr/Nova
#8 Philip Eberle mtx4/Nova
#9 Rob Kuijper Serpent 720/Mega ZX
#10 Ruud Schuitmaker Serpent 720/Mega MF

Very good result for Serpent, and very good level of driving was shown by a large group of competitors, it was unbelieveably close !! both in Qualifying and in the finals !!

Overview:
The event was very well organised and being run in good atmosphere ! more than 35.000 visitors came to the Modelbau Bodensee show, we hope to be back next year.

Ciao

Rob