Daan Jacobs wins Dutch 200mm Rd3

The 3rd round of the Dutch nationals 1/10 scale was held in the centre of the Netherlands at the Utrecht club Raco2000 and Daan Jacobs wrote the following report. “The track from Raco2000 is fast and bumpy, so the shocks of the car are really important on this track. You want your car stable and consistent on the bumps and also keep corner speed in your car. During Saturday we saw a lot of drivers driving consistent laps under 16 seconds with the fastest lap times of 15,6 seconds, so it promised to be close for the race on Sunday.

Sunday morning started with 3 rounds of qualification. The qualification system is in the Dutch championship is different than the normal way of qualification. We work with the 3 fastest laps in a row in 4 minutes time. In the first round it was Pedro Rombouts who set the fastest time in 3 laps with an overall time of 46,963 in the second place it was Belgium driver Maxim Claes who set a time of 47,412 and real closely followed by Sander Borghoff with 3 thousands of a second (47,415). The second round I found a better pace and could set a new fastest time of 46, 655 with three laps of 15,5 seconds, still in second and third Pedro and Maxim. The third round was again really close where Pedro came real close to the fastest time but was 5 hundreds of second to slow to take the pole position.

Top 4 after qualifications:
1. Daan Jacobs – 0:46.655
2. Pedro Rombouts -0:46.707
3. Maxim Claes – 0:46.997
4. Sander Borghoff -0:47.415

The tire wear was massive on this track especially on the right side of the car with allot of high-speed corners to the left. So it would be really close to make it on 1 set of tires for the 30 minutes final. I was almost sure I can make the final on one set of tires because I know the tire wear of the new 747 is really good and I also know the car is really good on big and small tires!

The start was good but in the third corner some cars came together. Pedro Rombouts lost 5 seconds so I good built up the lead with in second Sander Borghoff and third Maxim Claes. After 8 minutes of driving Sander made a small mistake that finally cost him the race because strange enough he broke his clutch with the crash. Maxim had some engine problems in the final so he had to retire the race.

Pedro secured the second place again. And was half a lap behind. My car was really stable and already fast in the first ten minutes on big tires where I could make the distance to Pedro. After 20 minutes I became on the tail of Pedro and I was almost one lap in front. So now I was going more in cruise mode to spare my tires for safety. After a proximity 27 minutes of driving there where a few drivers that became without any foam on their rims.  So we finished the final with a total of 4 drivers. It was the young guy Mitchell van Es who finished on the 3rd place. This was really nice to see, in his first year of 200mm gas cars, before this he drove 1/10 electric cars a nice performance.”

Final Top 3:
1. Daan Jacobs
2. Pedro Rombouts
3. Mitchell van Es

Source: Serpent [serpent.com]