Welcome once again to the HPI Challenge European Race, as always race meetings like these are interesting affairs, helped along by the witnessing one of the greatest Football games ever….
Thursday — Travelling Time
Having travelled to this track a few times in the build up and preparations for the race it was fairly straightforward to get us to the track mid afternoon Thursday. Unlike the rest of our UK Team who choose to drive and managing to get sent the wrong way by some helpful Frenchman (!$&*!?), we flew, thankfully!!
Anyway, when we arrived at the track most of the UK Team had arrived, along with several Greek competitors and French, in fact there were drivers arriving all the time.
At this stage the track was closed to the competitors competing in the HPI Challenge, but we allowed racers who were driving their 1/8th Scale Proceed cars onto the track to demo them while we set up our HPI Banners and made sure everything was going to be ok come the morning.
 The Ferrari 355-F1 |  LRP's Andy Kraemer |
Friday — Controlled Practise
When the racers arrived on Friday, we gave them an hour or so before dishing out the handout equipment, book them into the meeting and set them off for their controlled practise sessions.
It’s a familiar routine now to use the HPI, Team Orion and LRP Handout equipment including Speed Controls (LRP), motors and batteries supplied by Team Orion and of course a brand new set of tyres for everyone from HPI.
As you’d guess, by using this equipment we create a level playing field for the drivers which means it is down to their skills on the ‘sticks’ and with setting up the chassis’s…
So out for practise and maybe you’re wondering what the track is like?
Well it’s HUGE, it was recently used for the 1/5th Scale world Championship (2 weeks before the HPI Challenge European Finals) but it’s a pretty cool track as there are 2 layouts you can use, and this weekend we were using BOTH!!
The full track was used by the Nitro, Super Nitro Modified and Proceed cars and they really looked great racing round the full circuit, down the main straight they were hitting top speeds of around 40 — 50mph which looked impressive and I guessed wicked fun to be driving. The Electric classes ran round the shorter track which included a short cut over a hump in the middle section of the back straight. Perfect!!
There were 4 rounds of controlled practise (in Heat order so we can check everyone’s crystals are working properly) which ran without problems…. apart from the torrential rain half way through the day!! Fortunately the weather cleared up and toward the end of the day the track had dried again… only for it to rain again!! Things weren’t looking good on the weather front and the forecast wasn’t much better…
Time to return to the hotel where it was dry!!
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