The Finnish Nats, Race 3 - Home Track - Sunshine with a Mix of Risk of Rain

The 3rd race in the Finnish nationals was held at my home track. The track had been prepped very nicely, with salt to keep the dust down. It made for a dark, slightly damp track that held up well. It was really nice and nothing like it had been in testing.

There were 3 JQ Products cars in the race for the first time. One was raced by regular A-finalist Petri Mylläri, and another by a 9 year old beginner (or actually 2nd season veteran) Max Mört. I wanted to see how THE Car would perform in two different level drivers' hands. Neither of them got a lot of time to run the car before the race, so it was still a new experience for them.

Qualifying was going to be close, as Ari Heinonen and me battled once again. This time I used a secret weapon, PL M3 holeshots! I sneakily pulled them out for the first round, out of 4, and managed to TQ the first 2 rounds. Then I tried some other tyres, and for the last round gave Ari the Holeshots. He TQed the last 2 rounds, which meant we were tied on points. However my best time was just faster than his, so I was overall TQ. My first one in quite a while!

Petri Mylläri qualified in the top 10 (top 5?) and made the semi final, and Max ended up in the ¼ finals. At the end of qualifying both cars were performing pretty well, and things were looking good.

I had settled on a set up, and decide to use bow-ties for the mains, as I was actually low on tyres. I wanted to run recoil or revolvers but I didn't have enough to run, so I went with bow-tie. Normally if the track is slick, and the surface smooth, a smaller pin is the way to go. Holeshots wouldnt last the entire main so I couldnt run them.

Max was up first, in his quarter final, and after I set up his car a bit, checking some things, and making it easier and more stable to drive, he looked really good in the main. Unfortunately he flamed out once, and didn't bump, but he actually caught up a lot, and managed to do his own personal best laptime.

The semis were fairly uneventful, and the main players made the main.

A-Main

THE Main. I was hoping to have a repeat of the 1st Nats back in May, a race long battle with Ari. It started out well, Ari and I pulled away a bit, although Simo Ahoniemi stayed with us for longer than ever before. The smooth track surface playing into the hands of the on-road ace-Mugen driver. Ari and I swapped positions a couple of times, until I pulled a small gap, as Ari made a couple of mistakes. At the 15 min mark we were driving within a few seconds of each other, when Ari had a mysterious flameout. And that was that. He fell just under 1-lap down, and thats how it remained for the entire race, until the last few laps when I got close, and attempted to lap him, for bragging rights, but didn't quite manage. Petri Mylläri had a good start and was up to 3rd place with THE Car, until Ari's brother Arto passed him demoting him to 4th. He was circulating in 4th place when his aftermarket aluminium servo arm broke! That sucked!

My win meant, that I secured the Finnish Championships with one race still to go. So THE Car is now Finnish Champion. All in all it was a good test also. Max put it through some serious crash testing in the early stages of the race :-), and only managed to snap a hingepin, which I already knew was a problem, as they are too hard. Petri didn't break anything JQ Products, although he did have a brake problem in the main. Both drivers were able to drive at their normal level or above, in their first race with THE Car, and I was happy,not only for winning the race and championship, but also because I now was more confident than ever that THE Car will perform in any driver's hands.

 More pictures in THE Gallery. Thank You to Carl Magnus Fager, Ilari Lehtinen, Mikko Meriluoto and Jani Pakkala

Thank you to ProLine, OS, Werks, LRP, Savox, JVD, Maugrafix and Neobuggy