2013 National Championship Round 1 (Update video A Final Nr.2)

Last weekend was the 1st race of 2013 for the 1/10 scale EP Touring class.
We had nice weather with only a few clouds, a bit of wind that made things complicated and temperatures varying from 16 degrees to 26 within the day, depending on cloudiness.

I arrived at the track on Saturday around 4 in the afternoon, managed to do a few runs and left the track being pleased with the progress I had made during practice. My first run had lap times around the 19.2 sec range and in my last run I had dropped to 18.0 flat. That was 0.5 clear of my nearest rival on the day, Nick Geo who amusingly chose to register his AMB with a different name, Andreas.

Sunday of course is raceday and nothing is won on Saturday so I knew that everything is open.
And so it proved to be.. “to finish first, you first have to finish”
1st Qual run, stuck behind slower car of Andreas for 3 laps, then an error of my judgment resulted in contact with him that striped my tyre which then broke into pieces in the front straight.
2nd Qual run, small stone hits the spur right before the start and my run is over before it even started
3rd Qual run, started well, had to go through all the cars starting in front of me, still running at a comfortable TQ run pace till my battery decided to say goodbye.
All Qual runs were done and I was out of the Amain, sitting dead last in overall standings.

That pretty much summed up my luck of the day which continued all through the finals.

I take some consolidation from the fact that my pace was very good and I am confident that with the package I have I can be competitive even though I can only afford a few runs on Saturday prior to each race.


Leaving my performance aside the race was one of the best races in this class we have had in years. A record number of participants, many new racers and many more returning back into the action with respectable performance and a lot of different car manufacturers represented, in combination with strong anticipation from racers and spectators on who is fastest had set the scene for a memorable race.


We had entries from: (alphabetical order)
Cars
AWESOMATIX
HPI/HB
KYOSHO
SCHUMACHER
TAMIYA
TOP
XRAY
YOKOMO

Tyres
LRP
NOSRAM
RIDE
SOREX
SWEEP

Electronics:
ADVANCED ELECTRONICS
HB
HOBBYWING
LRP
MUCH MORE
NOSRAM
SPEEDPASSION
TEAM ORION

If I forgot any manufacturer, please feel free to add into comments.

Being also part of the organization and being the chairman of the category it was a great pleasure to receive such positive feedback from the racers and have their support in our efforts to provide well organized races. My only regret is the delay in the time schedule which we will try and improve considerably for the future races.

The 3 Amains provided little action at the front as current National Champion, Nick/Andreas “the kid” Georgiadis left no margin for any challenge of the lead from the other racers and won comfortably the race. The B and C main finals on the other hand provided plenty of action with many lead changes, strong comebacks and remarkable performances.

Next race is on the 26th of May at a great track about 3 hours away from Athens and the locals will make sure that their winning performance of last year will be repeated once more.

Soon more photos and videos..

A Final Run 1



My crappy luck also hit my video recording and only now realized that I did not record the whole 2nd A Final. Still you may enjoy most of it below: