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Swiss: 1/8 warm-up race: Sabrina reports (29/06/2009)

By:: Reporter
Linked to:: Serpent 966 1/8 scale 4WD EVO, Serpent 966 -TE 1/8 scale 4WD, Serpent 966 -TE v2 1/8 scale 4WD, World Championship 1/8 at the Lostallo track in Switzerland

Due to work, I could only get to Lostallo on Wednesday evening and started testing and setting up my car on Thursday. Since my Dad had to work the entire week, I was on my own and had no dedicated mechanic.

Michael, Bertram and Stef from Serpent took me under their wing and things worked pretty smoothly.

I got a lot of track time, my Serpent 966 felt very good on the huge Lostallo track and I was pretty happy with my lap times.

On Friday evening my Dad finally arrived to help me. Unfortunately things didn’t work out so great in the qualifiers and I ended up in the 1/8th final..
After the start I was in third position but after a driving error I found myself in last position.

I was able to make up some positions but then my fuel hose broke at the carburettor and my engine changed settings after each pit stop. This cost me a lot of time and I wasn’t able to reach a bump up position. This meant that the race was over for me.

Team Serpent drivers Andrea Cristiani, Marc Green and Michael Salven were still in the race though.

Marc raced in the quarter final which he won comfortably and Michael and Andrea had qualified for the half final.

Andrea, Michael and Marc managed to bump up to the final.

In the final, Michael’s engine gave up right after the start. Bertram and I changed his engine (the engine change took us 22 laps), so Michael could use the rest of the race for testing purposes and was very very fast and consistent.

Marc ran a great pace and ended up third after starting from 8th position. Andrea Christiani was also running a good race in 4th position right behind Marc, when his engine started to make problems and he dropped back, but was able to hold fourth place anyway.

Thanks to my Sponsor Serpent, max-power, idmtyres, MLC Fuel and LMI-racing and to my mechanics...

See you at the EC in Gubbio for the 1/10 race.

Regards,
Sabrina

Final results
1. Picco Alberto (IT) - 169 Laps in 1:00:03.485
2. Shimo Takaaki (JP) - 169 Laps in 1:00:19.478
3. Green Mark (GB) - 167 Laps in 1:00:00.494 Serpent
4. Cristiani Andrea (IT) - 166 Laps in 1:00:16.831 Serpent
5. Francesco Tironi (IT) - 165 Laps in 1:00:08.710
6. Schäfer Patrick (DE) - 163 Laps in 1:00:10.547
7. Pietsch Robert (DE) - 162 Laps in 59:54.987
8. Bertin Adrien (FR) - 135 Laps in 48:38.203
9. Salven Michael (NL) - 71 Laps in 33:13.269 Serpent
10. Pirani Andrea (IT) - 41 Laps in 14:26.581

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Large driver stand Swiss

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