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Andrea Cristiani report 1/8 World Championships in Lostallo (01/09/2009)

By:
Vincent Bitter

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


Hello everybody!
This year the 1/8 World Championship was held in Lostallo, Switzerland.
The track had been opened since thursday, so we arrived at the track on wednesday evening in order to arrange everything in the container.
During the first days, until monday, we had four testing rounds per day. You know this is not much but fortunately we had already been there for the pre-worlds and for some other practice, so I already knew the track and we had also a good set-up to start with. In fact during the first days we focused on the choise of the three engines for the race. We cecked also the fuel consumption but we were far from making 5 minutes... so we opted for a double fuel stop strategy, like the majority of the competitors.
On tuesday the qualifications started, but the first "real" round was on wednesday since we raced in the morning and the track was much cooler. I was happy with my car-engine set-up but unfortunately after a few minutes my 2.4 GHz receiver died.. The first fast round was gone..
We decided to take a step backward and to use the old and reliable crystals. There's only another fresh round on thursday morning: luckily everithing worked well and I set the 10th time; I had only little troubles that costed me about 2 seconds but this wouldn't have changed much for me, so we were happy with out 10th place.
In the last qualify we decided to try with 37 tyres compound since it was hot and we could have a good check as concerns the tyres wear with the semifinal configuration. Actually the wear was the same and the car was just more slippery, so we decided to start with 35 shore and to have a tyre-change in the semi.


Saturday came...the last day. I was in the B semifinal with the number three, behind Paolo Morganti and Robin D'Hont. After the start I held my position; my car was not perfect but I could run together with the second so my pace was enought good. But at the first pit I made a mistake and I lost about 3 seconds. I was now in 7th anyway nothing was still gone..but one lap before the second pit my fueltank was empty..I could reach the boxes anyway but I lost other 4 seconds. What's more we got a stop-and go for a bad refueling... You know that in a wc semi these are too many mistakes, in fact I ended 12th and I was out of the main final... pitty
For sure it wasn't as 2 years ago in Argentina but also not a very bad result.


Congratulations to Lamberto who dominated the whole final re-establishing that he's always the best when it's needed.
I want to thank my dad and my sponsors: Serpent, Max Power, Enneti, Sanwa.
Till next time

ciao
Andrea Cristiani