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Grand Prix EFRA 1/8 Aulnay (25/03/2009)

By:: Reporter-2
Linked to:: Serpent 966 1/8 scale 4WD EVO, Serpent 966 -TE 1/8 scale 4WD, Serpent 966 -TE v2 1/8 scale 4WD

Grand Prix EFRA 1/8 Aulnay

I arrived on the track on Friday late morning. The grip wasn’t very high.
After a few changes on the set-up, my car was very fast and easy to drive.
On Saturday, I was very fast during the first heat : I was 7th after this heat, with a 24 laps in 7’00”38 !
I had made a little mistake, so I could have done a 25 laps…
During the following heats (2 and 3), the track was slower. The last heat was nearly as fast as the first one, but I didn’t make better.
I ended 10th.

In the semi-final, I made a mistake at mid-race, and finished 4th, but I was faster than the 3rd in the other semi-final, so I took my ticket for the final !
In the final, the grip wasn’t very high at the beginning, and the lap times were not very good for all the drivers. It was considerably faster at the end.
I took a good start, and was 4th after a few laps. Christophe Louis and Romain Picard were very fast on their home track, and a little faster than me, so we were very close !
Unfortunately, my glow died after the mid-race, what was due to the fact that I went on the border in front of the pits at each lap, and the repeated shocks damaged it (with small tires, the bottom of the car was hitting the ground when going onto this border, and after the 67 laps of the semi, and an hundred laps in the final… That was too much !)… I just could end this lap and come into the pits, and it stopped. I lost 2 laps and a half and restarted. It then worked very well until the end, and I was damn fast, but the time left wasn’t sufficient to close the gap, so I finished 6th. Without this problem, it would have been very close between Christophe, Romain, Patrick Schaefer and me…

That was a really good race ! And it showed that it was useful to practice in 1/12th during winter !...

I would like to thanks Anthony (Abisset) and Stéphane (Vanpoucke), who did the refueling and tires change for me during the final.

This week-end showed that the car is very good, fast, and easy to drive, and also very reliable. When my mechanic restarted the car after the broken glow, he told me that he was very surprised, because some fumes were coming out of the body holes, through the wheels, etc… He thought that it was burning ! In fact, this track stresses the cars a lot, because there’s a lot of turns where we put a lot of throttle, and everything is becoming very hot… But I had no problem until the end of this 45 minutes final, so I think that we won’t have any problem on other tracks…

Next race for us is the 2nd round of the French championship, held in the North-West, in Concarneau, on the 10th, 11th, and 12th of April.

Stéphane RICCOBONO (Serpent / RB / Speedline)