The year started well as David started the year by becoming the TQ and winner of the Nitromania, which was run in Belgium with strong drivers as Adam Drake and Mike Thrue as participants.
One of them most enjoyable race of the year was obviously Neo10 that always has a very big list of top drivers.
David was struggling in the qualifications but managed to qualify for the 1/4 finals and bumped up to the semis where he stopped. An okay performance i think, even if David himself was disappointed.
In Swedish Cup, he managed to not win all the races as he did in 2009, but there is nothing that David is responsible as it was more from my side. However he won three of the races and the cup for the second year.
Swedish Nast. Was prove to be an interesting and different race if you think about track surface and tire wear. The race was Kyosho dominated with Linus Thern as TQ and winner and David as 2nd in both qualifying and the final result.
The Nordic Championships in Finland was also an exciting event when all the Friday practice rained out and all “non-Finnish” drivers were thrown straight into a race with minimal practice.
This also showed in the qualifying results when the Swedish drivers were unusually far down.
Anyway, in the finals everything changed and again it turned out that David is a phenomenal final driver as he managed to get back in the semifinal, and after 18 minutes in the main final he showed that he was the only one who survived nine minutes refueling and he won the race with big distance for the second consecutive year.
In July it was time for the European Championships in Guarda, Portugal and with track images from the Euro-Warmup it was not super-optimistic, but the organizers had done a great job on the track and everything around it was perfect. The goal was to qualify better than ninth place as he had in Austria, and of course getting to the final.
Even if David had not been on the track and run before, so he quickly came into the track layout and became 11 after practice and qualified 8th after being 2nd and 3rd in two rounds.
After a 3rd place in the semi it was time for his first European Cup final where he finished 6th and at the same time became the best junior.
In November, it was the World Championships in Pattaya, and a race where we really did not have any goal for as we had not been there practicing as many other drivers had been.
Once there it became a natural target to be top 48 to avoid driving a lower final on Saturday.
At the 4 qualifiers that were counted he ended between 18 and 27 which led to a 33rd place in the qualifiers which was good, although a 32-spot and 1/4 would have been better.
In the 1/8 final he had two flameouts as the ideling was little to low.
But it was interesting to see his speed as he was almost two seconds faster than the others in the 1/8-finale, and his fasters laptime was the fastest on the whole final day.
It would be fun to see how far he could go, but we were pleased with the results with no practice earlier, and to be at the Worlds and see the team take TQ and win the race was fantastic.
In addition to the “big” race, it has been runing some smaller races that have been both good and less good as Quackenbrueck where he was hit in the finals so that the car broke, broken clutch at Montpellier (sorry) and out-of-fuel at Kyosho Masters ( sorry again).
As the World in 1/10 electric buggy goes in Finland in 2011 David wanted to try to qualify for it, and with only one 1/10 race in the back (Swedish Nats 2009) it was at least worth a try.
The first competition of the year was in the Nordic Championships in Bergen, Norway and David ended 4tth in 2WD and become Nordic Champion in 4WD.
The other big race in the 1/10 class of the year was the Swedish Championships and again David was 4th in 2WD and again he won the 4WD and become Swedish Champion.
With a tight race calendar we could not run the entire Sweden Cup races in 1/10 but it was the last two. David have been better in 2WD in the year and was better in those races, but in 4WD he have been totally domination and won the two cup race he drove and the cup overall in the class.
At the end of the year, there has been a lot of practice in 1/10 Touring on a nearby track as outdoor racing is impossible with more than 70cm snow and tempatures down to -25.
To sum up i feel that 2010 was an equally good year as 2009, and now it's time to look at the 2011th with CHI Cup in 1/10 as the first race already next week.
With this, we give thanks for 2010 and would like to wish all a Happy New Year, and special thanks to our sponsors Kyosho, Orion, AKA, KO Propo, Upgrade-RC, Neobuggy, Dailedinc, DCD……
