Dirt Race in Padova. Report by Boots !

We headed out to Venice last weekend to probably one of the best racing facilities for 1/8th Rally Cross in the World.  Fantastic facilities
and great people and we were very excited about this event as we knew there would be no rain and we could race, plus it had a very good entry
with some American drivers attending.  We really wanted to use this event as a Worlds warm-up race for us.

We arrived on the Thursday where we were able to practice in the afternoon.  Friday was practice in the morning with timed practice in
the afternoon for receding the heats.  We had a base setup for our MP9 but we wanted to try a few other setups on the car.  After practice we
were happy with our final setup and were ready for qualifying.

Saturday Qualification

We arrived at the track on Saturday morning, 4 rounds of qualification with 2 rounds to count for TQ.  We decided that we would run our Novarossi BTTS with the 9901 pipe, We fitted the 6mm venturi as the
track had very little grip.  In fact some parts of the track looked like glass!  We also changed the clutch to 2 x plastic and one aluminium to make the car more driveable, Also we wanted to get a good fuel consumption
as the main final would be 45 minutes so we hoped to get 9 minutes from a tank of fuel.  We pretty much used our standard setup on the car that we use at most tracks.  We dropped the centre diff oil down to
5,000 instead of 6,000 and we decided to run super soft impact tyres. Heading into qualification round 1 we were on for a TQ run but unfortunately got tagged at the back of the track which cost us a few
seconds so we ended up second in the round.  The 2nd and 3rd rounds would be okay but not great, again due to traffic on the track and some very bad marhsalling, in fact there was 5 points with no Marshalls! so it dropped us down the leader board a little bit.
Round 4 would be our best round, taking the TQ on that round by a nice margin and setting the fastest run of the day, which would secure us overall TQ.

Semi Final

It was now Sunday - finals day - and we had a 10 minute semi warm-up so we decided to try some super soft Enduro as we wanted the tyre to last the 45 minute final, which Elliott was quite pleased with.  The car looked really good and had a lot of grip.  We decided to use these
Enduro super softs in our semi final, which Elliott led from start to finish, but was unfortunately 2 seconds off of Ryan Lutz semi final time so we were second on the grid for the Main A Final.

Main A Final

Again we decided to check the car through and make no changes. Unfortunately we could not meet the 9 minute fuel stop we wanted as the nature of the track was quite fast and flowing and where the track conditions were quite slippery our engine was using more fuel up than
normal and we decided to play safe and go for the 7.5 minute fuel stop. We were aware that some other drivers would be running the 9 minute fuel stop so Elliott knew from the start that we needed to be pushing quite hard at the start but unfortunately into the first lap Elliott

got tagged by one of the American drivers quite badly and was not marshalled very quickly, which dropped him to about 10th on the first lap but with some good lap times being set he was able to claw back to second quite quickly.  Unfortunately by then Ryan Lutz had made a break and had got away cleanly and was setting some fast lap times.  We were not able to recover as the race pace was extremely fast and with a few hold ups and bobbles we were unable to catch up in time.  We had to settle for second place, which was still a good result. We felt we should perhaps have gone back to the Impact tyre as I think the tyre was slightly better for that track as Ryan Lutz ran these in the final - we feel that the Enduro may not have been fast enough but we now know for next time that they will last a 45 minute final at this track.
We would like to thank everyone for their continued help and support and a special thanks to Mike, once again, for his support track side.

Just to let everyone know if we haven't already mentioned to you that Elliott will be launching his own web site, hopefully by Christmas, which will hold lots of information, reports, setups etc for everyone to read plus links to all our sponsors. Now over the next few weeks we will slowly be preparing for the World Championships in Argentina - hopefully we will see some of you there.

Regards Chris and Elliott Boots