European Finals!
Saturday - Qualifying | Sunday - Finals
HPI Europe race coordinator Greg Hill was on hand to witness the second HPI Challenge European Final race, in Burglen, Switzerland. The best HPI racers across Europe arrived to show their national colors and compete against the best drivers from many countries!
The HPI Challenge European Finals stretched over 3 days - Friday to Sunday, September 29 to October 1, 2000. To promote the "spec" idea, every racer used spec tires, plus the electric class racers used fixed-endbell 17 or 12 turn motors, spec speed controls from LRP Electronic and spec stick pack batteries!
Please note: picture credits belong to Lorenz Schmid of RC World (Switzerlang), Peter Emery of Radio Race Car International (England) and Rob Dobney on behalf of Mirage RC Enterprises (England). Additional thanks go to Lorenz of RC World, who posted Greg's report on his site as well!
Let's hand it over to Greg now, who wrote the following:
HPI Challenge 2000 European finals
Burglen, Switzerland
29th
Sept – 1st Oct
Hello
and welcome to the 2nd HPI Challenge 2000 European Finals.
From my birds eye view, this is what happened….
Friday – Controlled Practise
The
first thing to happen on Friday when the racers arrived was to welcome
them and to book in, hand over their handout equipment and fit it into
their cars. After that, and
before anyone went out to practise the cars had to be scrutineered and
a deposit paid for the equipment out on loan.
Again
HPI had made the brave decision to use Handout Motors and batteries from
Team Orion and Handout Electronic Speed Controllers from LRP, the same
as what happened last year at Ashby. This seems like a lot of effort for everyone, especially for
Greg Hill, Jean Marc and Jamie Booth handing out equipment and collecting
money… but honestly, when the cars got out onto the track and all the
drivers are the same speed, you started to realise that it’s the car set
up and driver skill that will win this race, not the guys with the biggest
wallets!
So
out for the first run of the day!
What’s the track like you say?
The track is in a permanent indoor facility based in a huge pre-fabricated concrete building - approximately the size of 2/3rds of a football field – it’s huge!!!
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The surface is unusual being sponge rubber painted black (for the track) and green ‘grass’ areas with rather harsh track markings that claimed a few broken bits for those drivers not concentrating 100%. It’s a rollercoaster of a layout and you have to be quite daring at times to post the laps, but as usual, car set up was essential.
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The lap starts by race control and immediately enters the fast double chicane left, right, left, right almost flat out before a short straight hard onto the brakes for the double hairpin before the fast sweeper taking you onto the back straight.
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At the end of the straight is another breath taking section or should that be the “close your eyes and pray” section - the 2nd chicane. The problem with this was getting the correct entry position to make this section quickly yet safe enough in case of error. This meant the entry position was usually a little wide but tightening into the second corner before completing the lap at the hairpin by race control where the timing loop is.
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A
good lap flies by in around 12 seconds, the quickest guys managing a handful
of sub 12 second laps during the weekend – those Super Nitro’s weren’t
half flying at times!!!!
There
were three rounds of practise that were meant to be timed. Problems
with the computer (throughout the weekend) meant it was controlled, but
not timed practise.
Continue on to:
Saturday - Qualifying