We did it!” was the thought that screamed through my mind on the last Sunday of July, a fraction of a second after the finish of the 1/10 Nitro touring European Championship and after the first 6 cars passed over the finish line… all of them XRAY NT1 cars! Finally, the long and grueling work of everybody on the XRAY team has paid off, and afforded us a fabulous achievement. I am so unbelievably happy, satisfied, and proud it is simply bursting from me.

As with every other team, we have worked very hard before this particular battle. Work has been done both off and on the track; the huge amount of work would not be feasible for a single person but rather required the combined teamwork of the racing and R&D teams. After the Off-road warm-up in Austria back in May, we were ready to participate at the official Nitro Touring Euros warm-up in Italy. However, due to some very important work and projects in the factory we had no free time and as such we had to skip the official warm-up and find an alternative date for private testing.

While testing we exchanged cars with Martin and as usual I felt his car to be much more sensitive with a lot more steering. To get an independent opinion, we gave both my and Martin’s cars to Bayer for testing. Ironically, he reported the opposite: my car had more steering and my shock set-up was more to his personal likeness! That made it very clear that everyone prefers a different handling style and what seems to understeer to one person may seem to oversteer for someone else.