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Michael Salven Column - 2007 Winternats (22/02/2007)

By:: Eoghain O'Briain
Linked to:: 2007 Winternats

By Michael Salven

Dear racers

This was one of the strangest Winternats, which I have had in all the years. Just a quick reminder: Florida in winter is sunshine; warm (shorts, t-shirt and so on) and regarding the Ft Myers track, grippy (1/8 scale traction rolling!) and hard on cars. This year everything was different, except the last thing. Right before the end of the final there were 3 cars running! Everybody else was broken. How did that happen, were all the drivers crap?

Of course not, Mike Swauger won this race the last three times and can hardly called a bad driver! It’s probably a combination of things:
First of all the weather did it’s part: We had everything from a “normal” first practice day, rained out second practice day, warm, sunny, rainy again and bloody cold on Saturday morning (freezing that is, literally!).
Track changed all the time and traction never came up as usual, but tire wear was high. But even that changed. While I had about 2mm wear in 10 minutes on Friday evening, it was double Saturday afternoon, without rain in between.
So it was hard to find the good set-up for the car.

Secondly, engines have become better. That is usually a good thing, but in combination with less grip and the famous Ft-Myers track made things difficult. For sure the balance of power and available traction has shifted this year.

How was my car? Somewhere between very good and not good at all. But then that was the track I think. And my engine? Incredible, only for the final to run richer and richer, without any visible reason after a trouble free week.

I was very happy after the first day. I used the set-up I already used in Bangkok, with a high front roll-center, blue springs front, red rears. I used WOS steering blocks upside down. To get rid of some initial understeer I changed to red/red springs. Later on I changed on advice of Paolo to blue/blue, which gave the same balance, but the car became a lot better in the chicanes. The car was at it’s best in my second heat, when I did the fastest laps, but then made a mistake and thought that I had broken it, only realizing that everything was just fine. Anyway the later of the two heats was faster so I had to qualify in the second heat of the second day. I did that, did a safe run with a pit stop, just to make sure I finish. I planned to run without a stop on the last qualifying day, but that never happened due to the rain. Fortunately we saw at least one more run in 1/10 scale where Paolo took TQ in great style with his Mega MF powered 720.

My final was short. First I made a small mistake and ripped the upper front pivot-ball out of the arm (if you use the WOS blocks upside-down, there is not enough thread left). I screwed it back in and continued the race, struggling with an engine that went richer all the time. But then everything was over when somebody spun in front of me and I hit him.

Maybe it was just my disappointment, but I think the 1/10 scale final was so much better than the 1/8 scale. It was pure excitement, at least in the beginning. And of course I was happy to see that Paolo could pull such a massive lead above the rest of the field. Being part of that show was the highlight this year.

You can find my setup sheet in the downloads section of the event here:
http://www.serpent.com/racing/event/2/

Michael Salven Action

Michael Salven with Stef Helvensteijn

Serpent 960 of Michael Salven

Michael Salven - Winternats 2007