Awesome Times in Hoeckendorf
Last weekend, Robin and I headed to Hoeckendorf, a small town ~250km south of Berlin. It was the second LRP-HPI-Challenge event of the current season and the racetrack was supposed to be very good, since last season's german championships very fought there, so I was pretty excited to get there.
Since training began on saturday we got ourselves a tent and some camping equipment and started to travel south on saturday afternoon. The autobahn was quite empty so we had no problems in reaching the racetrack. We build our tent next to the part of an old castle's ruin. That was pretty fun and exciting for Robin :)
After the tent was ready we headed to the track, because I really wanted to get some laps under my belt before dusk and I wanted to try out my new remote, that I got the day before we left since my old one was troubling me more than ever. I thought it might be a good idea to run my car on 17.5T brushless, to get a better feeling for the track. That was right but risky.
It soon got clear, that the track was way more challenging than my usual practice track. Less grip, more tight turns and very unforgiving curbs.
So after ~40 laps I crashed my car so badly that one of the steering knuckles broke, its screw got ripped out and took almost the entire screwthread with it.
Very shocking to say the least! Luckily I found a screw on the track that was a bit too long. I glued it in and prayed, that the steering knuckle would survive the race on sunday. So practice was done, since I did not want to stress the car even more.
Luckily the new remote worked like a charm. Sanwa mx3x ftw!
I changed my car back to rookie-setup and our day ended with cold ravioli, since I left the camping cooker at home.
Well Robin didnt seem to mind so it was okay for me.
After a pretty much sleepless night in the tent I got up at 6 a.m. and headed for the track. One of the 17.5T guys was already practicing so I was getting my batteries ready and headed for some practice.
Take a look at the fabolous track at 6 a.m. :)
After the driver's meeting it became clear that my 4 rookie-competitors were all members of MSC Hoeckendorf so I knew that the competition would be fierce!
The first qualifying session started at 9:30 a.m. I was in 2nd place from the beginning and Tom Janik won the first qualifier. It wasn't even close! He drove completely flawless. I already started to worry about my chances on victory today.
An hour later the 2nd qualifier was started and this time I was way faster. Unfortunately I lost 5 seconds because of a stupid crash. Because of that I wasn't able to compete for the 1st place again and was on 2nd in the end.
3rd qualifier went very well and I was able to pass Tom near the end of the session. So the qualifying ended with a 2/2/1 for me. That meant 2nd place on the grid for the finals.
But I was getting pretty confident, that I was able to beat Tom and score 1st place again since my laptimes were better than his, during the qualifying. I simply made too many mistakes. I was sure that I could beat him.
Then another shock. Some local guy came up to me and tried to tell my, that my car's body shell was illegal. They all thought it was a hotbodies shell...and HB shells are prohibited in rookie-challenge. Luckily the guy in charge recoginzed that I ran a legal S10 Blast TC body, which looks very similar to an HB mazda6.
So I could concentrate on preparing the car for the finals.
1st session of the finals was horrific. I was crashing all over the place and could not keep up with anyone. So I ended up in 5th place after the first session, completely depressed. It was defenitely the worst moment of the weekend. But fortunately some other drivers cheered me up and helped me to get focused again.
Tom scored 1st place again, so if he would have won the 2nd final as well he would have been the winner, since only the two best results are counted for the overall result.
Then the 2nd final started. I was so nervous. My hands were shaking and I was pretty sure that the win was unreachable.
But then I made a very good start and managed to get past Tom in the 2nd corner. After that he crashed so that I was in the lead and he was in 4th position. He was very fast but he couldn't get past the guy in 2nd place. So I was able to win the 2nd final with Tom on 3rd place.
Now we both had one win, which meant that the 3rd final would decide the events outcome!
The last final started and unfortunately I wasn't able to get past Tom as quickly as before. But then the guy on 3rd position crashed Tom and me off the track so I was in 3rd and he in 4th position. I managed to get into 1st position pretty soon while Tom was struggling with the other drivers since they were really not willing to let him pass. About 5 laps to go, he eventually made it to 2nd position and was closing in really fast. I was so afraid of making any mistakes that my laptimes were pretty bad. In the last corner he almost got me. So I won the last finals and the rookie challenge by 0,1 seconds! That was so close!
The entire weekend was a blast! Everyone at the track was so kind and helpful. Special thanks to Scott for some very good hints on the car (brake cleaner > tyre addtive) and of course tons of thanks go to MSC Hoeckendorf for all the hard work they put into our hobby that allows them to share such an awesome racetrack with the rest of us!
After all that lines, a few impressions from last sunday:
Robin's selfmade Hotwheels dirtrack:
