German 1/12 Nationals at Schermbeck
Hello Serpent lovers, it’s me again, this time reporting from the German 1/12 Nats at the nice facility of Modellbau Sipotech.
At our Nats, classes are splitted in 1/12 Modified open and 1/12 10.5 Stock. Modified is for pro drivers and 10.5 Stock is for amateurs.
This year we had an superb drivers field including Reinhard, Völker, Fischer and me. For myself this would be a great test for the upcoming WC in Germany. My goal was not really to win the Nats, main goal was to improve our car with lipo batteries and keep in touch with the two best drivers in the world.
In practice I tried a lot of different setups and before qualifying I was in a pretty good shape. Together with my Serpent buddy Paul Cicarello we made some nice changes on the car which actually improved the car with Lipo a lot.
In qualifying my car felt pretty comfortable, no one was actually faster, and I even took TQ. This was stunning, so all the work of the past few weeks paid off big time.
The fastest runs in qualifying were done by Reinhard, Fischer an me, all within one second!
Qualifying:
1. Mobers, Serpent
2. Reinhard, Asso
3. Völker, Asso
4. Fischer, Corally
5. Altmann, Asso
6. Sieber, CRC
7. Schoenrock, Associated
8. Asmer, Serpent
9. Buchheim, Xray
10. Altmann, Asso
In Stock we had our young gun Oliver Speith. This boy is supertalented and he had a really good chance to win this class. In qualifying Olli took 2nd, just behind the more experienced Andre Efler. The ranking after qualifying was:
1. Efler, Corally
2. Speith, Serpent
3. Hilbertz, HotBodies
4. Dietmar, Serpent
5. Berger, Corally
6. Ormans, Serpent
7. Ginuttis, CRC
8. Berger, Corally
9. Hellmann, Serpent
10. Schmitz, Serpent
Well, in total, Serpent had 7 cars out of 20 in the mains, that’s superb!
Shortly said, my finals were a disaster, something was wrong with my car. In my last qualifier I made a mistake in the chicane going onto the straight and hit the wall, but I could not find any bent things before the mains.
My car drove tweaked, but on the tweakboard it was straight…..hmmm…..so I only finished fourth. Völker won in great style, followed by Reinhard and Fischer.
Back at home I found out that the lower podplate was broken, oh well….things happen…
Nevertheless, I was happy with the way the car handled in the qualifiers and all the prototype options we tried are superb. More to come!!
In the stock mains Oliver did great again, he tried as hard as he could to catch Efler, but Efler stayed cool. So Efler won the Nats, in front of Oliver and Moritz Hilbert.
But, with his 2nd spot Oliver secured the German Junior Championship title, way to go my little buddy!!!
I want to thank you Paul and Ronald from Serpent for all their support, I appreciate it! Further I like to thank Reto from LRP, Sanwa, SMC, Xceed and MobGums for making it still possible to keep up with the world’s best at an old age J
See ya all at the worlds!
Markus
