Martin Hudy wins Indoor EC Warmup

The warm-up for the upcoming indoor EC was held on January 22/23 in Hrotovice, Czech Republic and Martin Hudy produced this report. The warm-up race was organized together with a club race so along with the expected Modified class, there were also Stock and Hobby classes. The race was attended by drivers from Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, and Germany. The race started on Saturday with controlled practice and with one round of qualifiers in the evening. There were 3 rounds of qualifiers held on Sunday and 3 rounds of finals. Team Xray was present at the race to help and support all Xray drivers. The team was represented by Martin and Juraj Hudy, Zdenko Kunak, Zdenek Hamak, and David Ehrbar.

The car was working perfectly right from the first practice run. Even though traction was very low, Xray drivers were able to find a set-up that worked very well in this condition. The biggest set-up change was in the shock springs. Martin tried using low-traction 2.6 springs in the front and 2.4 in the rear. The car was very easy to drive and fast with good traction. After sharing the set-up sheet with all Xray drivers, we were able to drive very fast lap times. Even though we had a total of more than 8 rounds of practice, traction was still very low and therefore we had to keep the soft set-up. To increase traction and steering, we changed to 350W shock oil. To make the car easier to drive with a soft set-up, we raised the roll centers on both front and rear upper linkages. With these changes, the car was working very well and we were ready for qualifiers.

The car was working very well during all qualifiers and there was no reason to improve set-ups. Even though I was happy with the car, I wanted to be even faster and therefore I felt that I needed to increase the cornering speed. The track layout was very difficult with many chicanes and a lot of on-power steering was needed. Therefore I changed the rear roll bar from 1.2 to 1.4. I got more on-power steering and also gained more stability in the chicanes. By this change, my car was perfect. I won 3 out of 4 qualifiers and set TQ ahead of Daniel Sieber and my teammate David Ehrbar

Mod qualifiers:
1. Martin Hudy Xray T3 2011
2. Daniel Sieber
3. David Ehrbar Xray T3 2011
4. Zdenko Kunak Xray T3 2011
5. Zdenek Hamak Xray T3 2011
6. Jan Gehrig Xray T3 2011
7. Dennis Fadtke
8. Michal Bok
9. Jiri Mara Xray T3 2011
10. Tomas Liptak Xray T3 2011

The Stock class was more or less a one man show because Zdenko Kunak was driving away in first place from first-to-last lap and was increasing his gap from lap to lap. Juraj Hudy was very motivated in this class after his 4th place in the DHI Cup. He tried to push very hard and in the end he qualified 3rd.

Stock qualifiers:
1. Zdenko Kunak Xray T3 2011
2. Radek Flek
3. Juraj Hudy Xray T3 2011
4. David Nemcek Xray T3 2011
5. Adam Dubak
6. Ladislav Beran Xray T3 2011
7. Drahoslav Hejtmanek Xray
8. Erik Margony
9. Dominik Masek Xray T3 2011
10. Marek Kovar Xray T3 2011

Because my car was working very well I decided to keep the same set-up for the finals. I won the first and second finals quite easily with more than 3second gaps. In the first final, Zdenko Kunak finished 2nd and David 3rd after Daniel’s mistake after the start. In the second final David was pushing a lot on Daniel (mainly at the end) but Daniel stayed calm and did not make any mistakes. For the third final – when I was already winner – I decided to change the set-up a little to see if I could drive even faster. I decreased the front roll center to get more steering. I got a little more steering however the car was more difficult to drive and I made a mistake. So, I learned that higher roll centers are much easier to drive, however it does not make the car slow. In the third final Daniel won by 0.1 sec over David (2nd) and Zdenko (3rd).

Final mod results:
1. Martin Hudy Xray T3 2011
2. Daniel Sieber
3. David Ehrbar Xray T3 2011
4. Zdenko Kunak Xray T3 2011
5. Jan Gehrig Xray T3 2011
6. Zdenek Hamak Xray T3 2011
7. Michal Bok
8. Dennis Fadtke
9. Jiri Mara Xray T3 2011
10. Tomas Liptak Xray T3 2011

Zdenko Kunak had no competition in the Stock finals and he won the first two finals very easily. However there was a very good battle for 2nd place between Radek Flek and Juraj Hudy. Juraj was very fast after the start and he always moved in front of Radek. Those two drivers were driving together the entire 5 minutes changing positions many times. In the end Radek finished 2nd when Juraj made a mistake in the last lap of the last final.

Final stock results:
1. Zdenko Kunak Xray T3 2011
2. Radek Flek
3. Juraj Hudy Xray T3 2011
4. Adam Dubak
5. David Nemcek Xray T3 2011
6. Drahoslav Hejtmanek Xray
7. Ladislav Beran Xray T3 2011
8. Erik Margony
9. Marek Kovar Xray T3 2011
10. Dominik Masek Xray T3 2011

Even though not so many drivers showed up, we were very happy with the race not only because of the good result but the organization was very good, the track layout was awesome (because it had mixture of fast and technical corners) but most importantly we found a very good set-up which will be our starting point at the Euros.

Source: Xray [teamxray.com]