Race-Report

• Official Practice

  The weather was sunny again on Saturday, with temperatures just under 20°C. Today we’re testing the race engine we rented. It’s a TM engine equipped with the latest TM carburetor.

  Even after the run-in period, it was obvious that the engine was excellent, and we were able to lower our lap times to 47.97 sec. So we just tested the different gear ratios.

  For the last two stints of the day we changed the engine to preserve the racing engine.

• RACE

  It was already 15°C early in the morning. Although rain is forecast for noon, the clouds blew away with the wind and it stayed sunny all day.

  Warm up . The warm-up went very well, and Jamie managed to finish in the top third even though we didn't use new tires. I finished at P5.

  In Qualifying, I wasn't able to take advantage of the slipstream and finished in 5th place. However, the fastest rolling lap time was 48.02 seconds, which would have put me in 2nd place. So it looked promising that the setup was good.

  In Heat 1, right after a good start, I was able to move up from 7th to 4th place and then to 3rd by the end of the lap. I stayed in 3rd place for 13 laps until I spun out during a battle four turns before the finish. I was still able to continue the race, but only finished in 9th place. It was really frustrating.

  In Heat 2, even though I started the engine in the parc fermé, the cable to the spark plug broke when I tried to start it. So I had to watch the race from the sidelines. Sometimes things just don’t go your way, and a podium finish was hardly a realistic possibility anymore.

  in the Final, I managed to move up four spots, but the tire pressure wasn’t right anymore. Since we didn’t run Heat 2, we couldn’t use that experience to adjust the pressure, so we ended up with the wrong settings. We also decided not to put on new tires. It was really a frustrating weekend, especially considering where we were coming from.

  1. Warm up: P5 (48:41 sec)

  2. Qualifying: P7 (48:20 sec)

  3. Heat 1: P9 (start P7, incident P3)

  4. Heat 2: P13 (start P9, not participate)

  5. Final: P7 (start P11)