Pierre Ronnefalk:s R/C blogg: Practice / Race week in France

As my work made it impossible to go to US and race “The Dirt” we desired to go to south France for some practice and then drive the Silver Pennes race some kilometers from Marsielle.

David had not been driving 1/8 nitro since the Worlds in Pattaya last November, so it felt like a good start of the OffRoad season.

We went to Lyon and when we were at the airport we also checked and took some pictures at the racetrack nearby the airport as it’s the place where Euro-B 2011 will be.

We started to visit a new track west of Lyon and nearby Adrien Bertins home where we picked up some fuel, starting box and engines.
The track was good for engine tests and had high grip and a lot of power driving.

We were keeping the worlds setup in the car to see how it should work in a European track. David started to use a 7-Port that he have been using at the worlds and 4 races before that, and switched after that to one of the new 5-port Jared Tebo World edition.
He liked the 5-Port really much as it had a smooth curve and good feeling from mid to high. On the track he was driving on the mileage was the same, but the 5-Port engine was new and tight.

Adrien was in place during the day and he drove his buggy also.
David and Adrien had different setups on their cars and David switched between them to make comparisons.
One other new thing on Davids car was the new KO Propo RXs servos, that has really interesting specifications and the feeling was better than the old ones.

Adrien was driving with one of Tebo VM bodies so it was actually two bodies with IFMAR markings on the track.

Satisfied with the day we prepared the car for Thursday practice in Pierrefeu, a track that David likes a lot.
An early morning leaving 5am and 4 hour later we arrived to the track between Marseille and Nice.

This was a new good driving with good weather compared to the Swedish snow and cold shit.
Robert Battle and Martin and Ales Bayer and some other drivers also came for practice at the track.

We went up to Pennes, near Marseille, and checked the track for the race … and it looked really difficult and fun on the same time. One unusual thing was the straight that ended in a dosed curve in concrete.
The track also had a lot of jumps in different sizes (19 of them). The pit area was roofed and placed under roof … something that was needed.

The first race day was Friday and it started with 2 rounds of free practice followed by 2 timed practice rounds, but without marshalling which was a bit strange.

David thought the track was difficult to maintain high speed on the track and all driving on the track was important. We made some small changes on the car and he felt it better to drive. The track was “dusty” and we drove all day with CityBeam (Cityblock in front and I-Beam in rear) supersoft.
The Aigion brothers were of cause fast on the track with Jerome being fasterst as it was his home track. After those David, Elliot and Battle was on the same lap times.

On saturday practice round we decided to switch from CityBeam to Impact as the track looked cleaner and better.

In the qualification round 1 we kept the car as the previous practices, and also kept Impact tires that were better than the CityBeam.
David started with number 2 after Yannick before so it was no problem with traffic.
With a really good driving and with traffic problem only twice it looked really good.
But then he made a mistake on the last lap just before the finish line which cost 4 sec and he finished 4 the in the first round that Yannick won.

The second qualifying round was overall slower than the first and David got also huge traffic problem in half of the round, but when he got passed the laptimes was better. Even this round he finished 4, and Jerome took it.

In the 3rd and last qualifying round so we tested the grid iron to see if there was any difference.
The driving was really good and the only mistake was when he has been hanging on curbs for a few seconds and some bad times at traffic.
He finished in 3rd in the round and 4th in total after Jerome, Yannick and Martin Bayer.
We was pleased with the result as it was a good start after 4 month with no nitro driving at all.

Unfortunately, it started raining after the qualifications and it was promised 33 mm in the night to Sunday and the final day.

Next day it was only to find that it had rained all night, but when we got to the track at 10am it looked okay even if the cars that came in from the finals looked anything but clean.
We made ourselves ready for the Semi practice and we had planned to test the GridIron and CityBeam tires.

In the 1/4 finals it began to rain a lot and the wind was really hard.
After the 1/4 final they called the 24 semi drivers for discuss and vote for continue/stop the race and after 12 for and 12 against the decision were to cancel the race and take the result from the qualifications.
David really wanted to drive and make some battling for the podium, but as the rain increased even more the decision was correct I think.