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Holland, Ermen reports from 1/8 Nats (30/03/2010)

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Reporter

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Serpent 966 1/8 scale 4WD EVO, Serpent 966 -TE 1/8 scale 4WD, Serpent 966 -TE v2 1/8 scale 4WD


1st Dutch National Apeldoorn

After a long cold winter stop, last weekend was the1st Dutch national at the beautiful venue of Apeldoorn were this years 1/8 IC GP is held. Weather forecasts were not all too good but on Saturday we had an almost dry day and I had a chance to do a lot of testing with the “newly-build-but-shaken-down” 966 with R&B power. With temperatures between 10 – 16 degrees the track grip was variable during the day.

I tested the WOS uprights and on the somewhat slippy track this worked better than the original ones. After changing some springs and down stop settings I could do constant lap times. The R&B “power plant” that I’m using starting this year was doing it work really well! After changing some manifold and exhausts combinations I could do 5 minutes with no problem and the power was definitely there! As a matter of fact it was a long time ago that I’ve felt this kind of power with this fuel consumption. Usually it is power or fuel consumption. Never knew that I could have both with no effort of tuning at all!

On Sunday morning the track was wet during some nightly rainfall. First round was on a damp track so everybody was using aqua or intermediate tires. The second round of qualification was on a dry track except for one turn in front of the driver’s rostrum which caused that laptimes were 1 – 3 tenth slower than usual. In the third round track was completely dry so almost everybody set their time in this round. I was able to do 29 laps in 7 minutes together with Rick Vrielijnck, Robin d’Hondt and Serpent Team mate Ilia van Gastel. Ilia set an amazing pole position with 6 seconds ahead of Rick V. Because I had some issues with overtaking slower drivers I was in 3rd place 0,65 sec behind Rick with Robin rounding up the top 4.

After Qualifying:
Pos   Name   Laps   Total time   Diff   Best time   In lap   Best speed
1   Ilia van Gastel   29   7:03.787      14.195   0   64.400
2   Rick Vrielijnck   29   7:09.869   6.082   14.272   0   64.000
3   John Ermen   29   7:10.519   6.732   14.393   0   63.500
4   Robin D´Hondt   29   7:11.680   7.893   14.325   0   63.800
5   Gunther van Steay   28   7:06.172   1 Lap   14.432   0   63.300
6   Steven Cuypers   28   7:11.368   5.196   14.679   0   62.200
7   Arie Manten   28   7:12.658   6.486   14.670   0   62.300
8   Stefan Koenders   28   7:14.563   8.391   14.604   0   62.600
9   Joey Sorber   27   7:00.264   2 Laps   14.740   0   62.000
10   Rik Veenma   27   7:01.006   0.742   14.795   0   61.800

After the lunch break the weather forecast finally came trough, bad for us though, because it began to rain really hard for about 10 – 15 minutes. As result all semi-finals and main NOMAC final were on a wet track.  At the start of the NK final the track was drying up really hard but was not completely dry. So again I had to use intermediate tires. The tires I used in the morning were completely worn out because of the dry track and the rough asphalt surface. So I had to use the only intermediate tires I had left. Because the tires were not the right ones I lost a lot of time – actually laps – in the first 10 minutes of the race. So when the track was dry enough to change to normal tires I did this right away. I managed to close the 10 lap gap to 5 laps but it was never enough to gain a podium finish.

Unfortunate of the wet start of the final because the speed, grip and lap times were definitely there to have a podium finish.

Final Results:
Pos   Name   Laps   Total time   Diff   Best time   In lap   Best speed
1   Robin D´Hondt   109   30:06.239      7:11.680   29   -
2   Rick Vrielijnck   108   30:11.032      7:09.869   29   -
3   Steven Cuypers   106   30:05.877      7:11.368   28   -
4   Ilia van Gastel   106   30:06.884      7:03.787   29   -
5   Marcel Schouten   105   30:08.481      7:04.541   27   -
6   John Ermen   104   30:11.177      7:10.519   29   -
7   Arie Manten   101   30:01.299      7:12.658   28   -
8   Joey Sorber   88   29:43.059      7:00.264   27   -
9   Hans Dokman   60   23:43.580      7:03.751   25   -
10   Roelof Tooms   12   4:34.772      7:12.488   26   -

Next National will be on my very fast home track in Rupchen. Let’s hope for better weather than the results will follow automatically!

Thanks to my sponsors for there faith and support, Serpent Motorsport, R&B Products and Tornado Fuel and thanks to my dad and Jonathan for the pitwork!

Regards,
John Ermen