Seinäjoki 27-28.2.2001

Time for another racereport then, and this time it's from two races, both in Seinäjoki this last weekend. I have to start off with saying that doing two races in one weekend, when you have been ill the week before, can actually be quite tough. Anyway, I made it and even though I'm not that happy with the results it was still a lot of fun. The good thing about Seinäjoki is that it is quite close to home for me, only about a one hour drive. Most of the drivers running the FinTrack series was also entered for this race , but some big name drivers were missing. Teemu Leino was in Florida testing for the upcoming Winterchamps and the Ahoniemi brothers were concentrating on 12th scale racing this weekend as the Finnish championships was in that class was decided this weekend.
 
 

Saturday

Began early...this was going to be quite a long day as four classes were run. As you can see from the track layout lower on the page the track was very tight with lots of chicanes and the track being no more than two meters wide. My car was working well and was easy to drive but I was lacking a bit in absolute lap times. First qualifying was pretty usual, a couple of small mistakes and I was somewhere like 12th or 13th. Second qualifying I got it together and had a better run, only one mistake, and I was 9th. I did not change anyhing on my car during the day really, just run some different motors. Third qualifying was bad, when I reallly needed a good run. So I dropped to 12th. 
Juho Levänen pretty much dominated throughout qualifying and won the first 2 a-mains so not the most exciting race at the top. The best Yokomo's were Jarno in 7th place and Henrik in 8th, just like usual on carpet. I finished 13th...after two b-mains. The first one was quite fun but the second was not.
 
 

Sunday

Day two, race two. For this race I planned to try quite a few things, taking it more like a test than a race. In the beginning I run the same setup like on Saturday but with and Andy's Stratus instead of the Protoform. Then I moved the rear link down to hole #2 (had been running #1) and that worked well, even though the change was very small. I also tried 037M inserts compared to the firmer 037F that I usually run, but I still like the firmer ones better. The car just feels a lot more loose with the M inserts. I had also been running the front shocks laid down one step but moved them to the outer hole as the grip came up, just to stiffen the front a bit. During the day I was using both an LRP fusion 11x2 and a 9x2, running both with the new Xmax brushes and experimenting a bit with gear ratios. I have to say I was quite happy with the Xmax's as I think they worked better than the Hyper 2's I have been running. 
So what happened in the race? Mika Similä was fast all day and won the race. I qualified 8th after some bad qualifiers. Finished 7th, 6th and 8th in the finals. I managed to improve my best lap from Saturday with 0.15s but I would have wanted to find a bit more. But I did my best lap time in the last main so I guess I was going in the right direction. You can check the setup I did my best laptime with in the setups section.

What's next? Nothing really...think it's 5 weeks 'til the next race and that's way too long. I really wish there were more races here cause this is just so much fun! Cya.
 
 

(track layout)

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