Racing News:

27.02.2010

OEPS Rund 1 @ Dison

We arrived at the race venue in Dison on Friday noon. Nick was already there and  took us on  a tour of the location. It looked as good as promised. The track seemed fine and challenging and the rest of the location including the café looked good. After a couple of hours the racers started arriving, and the venue was soon filled with racers equipment. It was cool to see that all teams had put a lot of effort in building their cars, and also that there were a lot of innovative chassis.

OEPS has really captured the imagination of slotracers or maybe I should say model car racers across Europe. We had 27 team entries for the first round in Dison, that was a total of 78 drivers, and this for a series racing under a very liberal and open rule book. That showed on many of the entered cars, as there were several new chassis, not just SLP spin off designs, but really OEPS oriented designs. So, 27 teams on 12 different chassis designs. What will we see in Copenhagen? I know for a fact that several teams are already working on upgrades, changed chassis designs and even some who has thrown themselves at different chassis in the slight hope that they will be better of next time around.

Round 1 in Dison brought a new wave of engineering and development to model car racing, something that can only help push the producers, even the bigger ones, to further their development.

What about the action then?

Practice

When the free practice sessions started, it was soon obvious that the teams that were able to handle a low grip track would have a big advantage. Although the track was “glued” there was no doubt that the grip would be low from the word go. The only uncertainty was how much grip would build up during training and the first heats of the race.  From an organizers point of view the practice session went well. The teams managed the card system well so that you did not have to stand in line for age waiting for your turn. This system will also be adopted in Copenhagen.

Practice showed some very long faces among some racers! They were fighting to find a workable setup. Therefore most teams stayed on until the bitter end around midnight, to familiarize themselves with the track and to get maximum out of their cars.  Some of us were in deep trouble, as we had setups that worked on high grip and moderate grip, but that was not here, because this was really low grip with a capital L.

Saturday morning the teams got their handout ProSlot PS4000Competition motors, 2 for each team, to mount in their car. The motors were distributed by lottery, a solution we are very happy with. All the motors where broken inn and tested before the race so the lottery system saved everyone a lot of time, since we know that racers, if allowed, can use ages to decide which motor to go for if they were to be handpicked. Not only did this work wonders for the whole procedure, more importantly not one team complained about a bad motor.

Qualifying

Qualifying order was made up by the computer, as it turned out it was alphabetically drawn by the computer. This of course was how it turned out, for the next round it will be in the order of championship positions with the lowest ranking team qualifying first. Qualifying was done in lane 7, mainly because lane 7 was fast and not too tricky.

The fight among the teams were very close up and down the field with the bottom 9 qualifiers covered by a mere 2 tenths of a second, except for Slowfingers, who did not turn up for qualifying and ended up last. Some teams were clearly frustrated by their lack of performance, as they did not even come close to the times they had done during practice the night before. Among them where Racing for Vikings who could not do a single coherent lap, Robert Castello being very frustrated. The same could be said about RRC, Charlies Angels, Belgian Juniors and Trondheim Racing, all seemed to perform far below expectations.  Jens Racing and De Tomaso Racing also ended in the slowest day heat, something of a surprise as both Jens and De Tomaso had cars that both looked and performed well. As usual this only goes to show that one minute of BANZAI lapping is a hard exercise!

Those qualifying for the second day heat was only slightly faster, and again the nine who made the mid field cut was very closely matched during qualifying. Two teams ended on exactly the same time, Slottec and Julia II both doing a 7.410. Later both teams showed that they were not flashes in the pan, as they fought their way into the top 10. The mid field in the end was closely matched, with some boarderline great performances by the likes of GMS Racing, Dr. Slot and LRD 1.

Not surprisingly pole was a battle between Ralpf Seif’s ACR Racing and Nick De Wachters Works team, who ended up at the very top of a extremely close fought pole battle. Remember the track was still somewhat “green” at this point, and everyone was fighting to get their cars around the track! But there were some surprises along the way. Scuderia Minimale managed to secure an extremely credible 8^th. Qualifying spot despite a brand new car that had barely rolled a meter before the race. Jäger-Team who are front runners in the SLP series clawed onto ninth spot, as Kaitserrari, MH and R.I.C.H. fought it out over the next couple of spots. In the end only two teams managed to go under the 7 sec. mark and that was ACR and NDW Works. ACR claimed pole by only 0.08 seconds in front of NDW, with the battle for 3^rd position and the last qualifying point was between No Limits and Badet racing, with Badet taking the last point with an advantage of a mere 0.001 seconds!!

Truly a very close qualifying session was over, and now, it was time for the race proper!

But first there was tech control. Tech control was laid into the capable hands of Peter Oberbillig and Sascha Kuss. Since OEPS have a very strict penalty system for not passing TC it came as a surprise that as many as 11 teams had to take a minute penalty before they went straight to the pit to fix their car according to the tech rules.  

The race

Just like the battle for pole had been tight, the race proper turned out to be a real challenge, and there where ding dong battles all the way up and down the field.

The first 9 teams to do their day heat was,  Slowfingers, Racing for Vikings, Belgian Juniors, RRC Racing, Charlies Angels, Paddle Racing, Trondheim Racing, Jens Racing and De Tomaso Racing. From the word go Belgian Juniors were out on a mission to haul their asses up through the field. They were a whole lot quicker than the qualifying session had hinted at. Racing for Vikings and Trondheim Racing however, both ran into trouble very early on. Both had problems with the guide holders and lost numerous laps to repairs. This affected both teams in the morals department as well as they almost showed signs of giving up altogether. Luckily both teams soldiered on. As time would show, both were in for even more of the same. Slowfingers also ran into trouble, loosing several laps. Jens Racing had a hard time finding a rhythm and the only teams with a relatively trouble free run through the first day stint were De Tomaso, Charlies Angels and Belgian Juniors. Belgian Juniors were gone by now taking around 3 laps per stint on the team running second, Charlies Angels, who for their part was being pushed really hard by De Tomaso, with whom they changed positions for three of the eight stints. Paddle Racing had the bad fortune of a broken rear wing that needed fixing, something that cost them dear, and possibly lost them a top finish in the first daystint. However no one really knew how many laps would be needed to advance, but among the first nine teams Belgian Juniors, Charlies Angels and de Tomaso did their best to push for a spot in the top 18 for the night stints!

After the trouble of many of the first nine teams one would think the middle heat teams would take a cautious position, but that was not the way of Weam Team, Slotfabrik, LRD 2, Sloefspeed, Slottec, Julia II, Dr. Slot, LRD 1 or GMS. They all pushed very hard from the word go. Some had lot’s to try and get back as it was especially here in the middle heat that 1 minute penalties had been handed out. Slottec however was gone from the word GO! They simply ran circles around the competitors. Sloefspeed tried to keep up but could only look on as Slottec advanced their lead stint by stint. Snapping at the heels of Sloefspeed was LRD 2 closely followed by Dr. Slot and LRD 1. Slotfabrik had technical troubles, and they clearly missed the talents of Fola, both as a mechanic and as a driver at this point, could it get better? However no one could do much about the very stable looking Slottec car. Weam Team was also-rans in this company and moved backwards just like Julia II that was plagued by erratic driving and even had to make repairs along the way, loosing several laps due to crashes and repairs. In the end the top three in this middle heat was Slottec, Sloefspeed and LRD 2, pulling away from the others.

 

Now it was time for the “top dog” fight in the last of the day heats. I guess everyone was looking forward to see these guys fight it out on the track. Would they be as fast as expected, or would the fall flat on their faces? Well, the answer quickly materialized. The top teams were ACR, NDW, Badet, No Limits, MH Racing, Team RICH, Kaitserrari, Scuderia Minimale and Jäger-Team. Kaitserrari had a penalty to take, and lost out at the green light, MH Racing and Scuderia Minimale fought a close battle at this point. Badet tried to hang onto the top three, but honestly even though the battle for pole had been close, it was soon obvious that NDW Works team where able to pull away from all comers, including ACR and Badet. To make matters worse for Badet they hit some technical problems that cost them somewhere between 160 and 200 laps, this was very bad news for them. Kaitserrari also hit some technical glitches and lost several laps, but at the same time they were nowhere near the potential they had showed in qualifying. Team RICH drove a very steady race, not any problems, but neither did they set the track on fire, doing exactly what they had to do to stay in the top 9 hunt. Scuderia Minimale lost their rear wing, something that cost them quite a few laps, and pushed them into the midfield. Top dog however, are top dogs, and the top fight was between, well really it was between no one! NDW Works had simply walked away with the race, leading ACR by 35 laps after the first day stint. Barring technical troubles no one seemed to be able to push NDW. In second spot, quite safely was ACR, they would have to up the ante if they were to push NDW.

Could they do it?? Well, err no!

Night Heats 

So it was time to turn off the lights and stay in the slot! The first heats had shuffled the score board a bit, and quite a few teams had swapped places before the “nightshift”!

Again it was the nine slowest teams from day 1 that had to start. Here we saw some very surprising teams, in that both Badet and Weam Team had fallen all the way to the back. And they were in for more trouble as were Racing for Vikings.

The night session saw NDW works team extending their lead. The Audi was well set up and so consistently driven by the team that by the end of the night session it was clear that they would secure a maiden OEPS win, if they could just stay out of trouble for the last day section. With a lead of 85 rounds on ACR the NDW Works Team was in their own league. The battle for the podium was however very tight. With only 6 rounds separating No Limits, ACR and the Jaeger team. Julia II, Dr Slot and the Belgian juniors also had a good night session all within the top ten total laps in the dark. All in all the track conditions improved for the night section, and some of the struggling teams from the first day section, got better performance out their cars, and in the mid field the position stayed very tight.

More to come later today.....................................

Pos.	Team	Time.
1	ACR Racing	6,902
2	NDW Works	6,981
3	Badet Racing	7,167
4	No Limits Racing	7,168
5	MH Racing	7,236
6	Team R.I.C.H	7,245
7	Kaitserrari FINNLAND	7,254
8	Minimale Racing	7,305
9	Jâger-Team	7,307
10	GMS Racing	7,315
11	LRD Intl  Racing	7,320
12	Dr Slot	7,345
13	Julia II  Racing	7,410
14	Slottec  Racing	7,410
15	Sloefspeed	7,432
16	LRD Interenational 2	7,500
17	Slotfabrik Racing	7,502
18	Weam Team	7,550
19	De Tomaso  Racing	7,564
20	Jens Racing	7,593
21	Trondheim Racing	7,733
22	Paddle Racing	7,737
23	Charlies Angels	7,748
24	RRC Racing	7,792
25	Belgian Junior	7,828
26	Vikings Racing	8,006
27	Slowfingers Racing	99,000

Position	Team	Day 1	Night	Day 2	Total	Penalty	Final
1	NDW Works	759,30	794,80	814,80	2368,90		2368,90
2	ACR Racing	724,03	745,86	818,28	2288,17		2288,17
3	Jâger-Team	712,56	753,54	784,31	2250,41		2250,41
4	No Limits Racing	717,30	755,13	771,29	2243,72		2243,72
5	Team R.I.C.H	677,93	724,94	798,07	2200,94		2200,94
6	Slottec  Racing	713,83	695,81	783,78	2193,42		2193,42
7	Dr Slot	676,15	736,34	775,13	2187,62		2187,62
8	Sloefspeed	698,72	741,25	747,56	2187,53		2187,53
9	Julia II  Racing	637,19	739,73	759,50	2136,42		2136,42
10	Minimale Racing	673,56	697,64	755,58	2126,78		2126,78
11	Belgian Junior	669,46	713,75	731,04	2114,25		2114,25
12	LRD Intl  Racing	676,19	706,21	724,85	2107,25		2107,25
13	LRD Interenational 2	681,19	700,90	723,85	2105,94		2105,94
14	De Tomaso  Racing	644,31	693,11	754,80	2092,22		2092,22
15	Kaitserrari  FINNLAND	641,41	699,15	748,80	2089,36		2089,36
16	Charlies Angels	644,71	690,76	743,77	2079,24		2079,24
17	MH Racing	671,41	733,30	759,56	2164,27	99	2065,27
18	Weam Team	633,12	687,06	734,30	2054,48		2054,48
19	Slotfabrik Racing	661,00	635,04	738,57	2034,61		2034,61
20	RRC Racing	624,13	671,73	719,89	2015,75		2015,75
21	GMS Racing	612,00	650,44	692,01	1954,45		1954,45
22	Badet Racing	533,00	582,30	760,03	1875,33		1875,33
23	Paddle Racing	545,31	544,34	697,79	1787,44		1787,44
24	Jens Racing	584,75	635,03	661,28	1881,06	97	1784,06
25	Trondheim Racing	497,57	555,25	695,56	1748,38		1748,38
26	Slowfingers Racing	483,01	560,77	674,85	1718,63		1718,63
27	Vikings Racing	314,04	485,30	635,02	1434,36		1434,36