Lostallo report by Mark Green

Last Updated on Thursday, 10 September 2009 16:23 Written by Xray Asia Thursday, 10 September 2009 03:05

Ok this track is very different in that it is so big (full throttle for 6-7 secs). The first thing that you think is that you will need a very long 2nd gear to get good top speed, the only problem here is that the infield needs to pick up 2nd gear at 2 points and then this makes the long gear way too long/tall and makes the engine get hot so 2nd gear ratio is very important. The best result for me and my Novarossi Flash was to gear 2nd so that the car would still accelerate through the infield and then work on other ways on getting top speed back by more rpm from the engine. To do this I ran the short manifold 9mm carb insert and a 2052 pipe. Of course there was no way I was going to make 5 mins fuel but my feeling was that if someone could do 5 mins then they would be very on the limit and if the air temps got high then they would not be able to do the 5 mins. Due to the high rpm my Novarossi was making I changed the glow plug to a 8 cold and put the head clearance up 0.05, the end result was very good with 4 mins 15 sec fuel and very good top speeds of 102-105 kmph.

Car wise my 966 was really looking good. I started with the same setup as from the pre worlds. As we had limited number off practise I had to really plan what and when to test certain things. As the track was dirty for the first day and by the 2nd day the track was starting to grip up I used these to do the engines. The next 2 days was for setting the 966. Now the track was clean and had grip I could test changes to the car. It was already good but needed more hair pin steering and faster rotation. The easy thing about the 966 is that the set up window is very big so you can have a number off settings that work, its just down to driver preferences. I don't like to brake I prefer to let the steering slow the car so to find this I tested ...

1- Softer front springs - This worked as in more steering but now the car would grind out at high speed and understeer so this would set the spring rate for me ( Green springs )

2- Hard rear springs - again this gave more steering but also made the rear to loose in the chicane before the main straight so back to Pink springs

3- Extra high rear roll centre - due to the great design and the user friendly set up I was able to add an extra 1 mm spacer under the rear lower wishbone mounts to raise them. This worked good and gave more steering with no lost of traction ( after rain the track had less grip so I removed the 1 mm shims )

4 - Body shell - Xceed Zytec or P909, this was very easy. I had been using the Zytec then put the P909 this was very stable but had way to much understeer on my car, so 100% the light Xceed Zytec was best.

5 - Rear toe-in. For most tracks we tend to run 2' toe-in but at this track we were able to run just under 1'. This gave the car great top speed but also still had good rear traction.

6 - Angle front top wishbone. I have to say that this was one of the best improvement to steering, all credit to Micheal Salven. He told us to try and he was so right in that the car had more off throttle turn in with a little more on throttle understeer but this was easy to fix, just hit the throttle harder ;)

I tested some other items but they really had no effect on lap times, only changed the balance of the car. So now the car was ready for Qualification.

The Qualification went very well being in the top 10. The track like most other track gets slower when hot so the fastest times would come when the track was cold. I would say that out of 6 rounds only 3 would be fast. After all 6 rounds I was 4th. I can't say enough how my 966 and the Novarossi engines were perfect and along with my super pitman Stef Helvensteijn from Team Serpent who did a great job the whole meeting. Thanks Stef! Also like to thank Michael Salven who even after having problems in his semi he helped me in the main final.

Having got to the top 4 I was able to have a day off from the finals so set about checking the car and engines. Normally I am watching the top 4 drivers practise but this time it was my turn. Now I had to test for the final, I ran a new Novarossi engine and tested different Xceed tyres and hardness to make sure I would only do 1 stop for the final.

The semi-finals were very good races to watch with lots of action and great driving and action in the pit lane. It was very unlucky for the Team Serpent drivers Paolo Morganti (broken engine) and Michael Salven who both should have easily bumped up to the main final. They both was very fast and had great cars.

The Main Final

Well for me it was a great disappointment as making the top 4 gave me a real feeling that I could finish on the podium. In the warmup the car felt good and the engine was fast and my pit crew was ready. I got an OK start but then got hit a couple of times which ended with me on the grass. This was very bad as the grass was still wet and it took like 2 laps for my tyres to come back. I then had "red mist" and made some mistakes but I settled down and just tried to focus on getting the car home. After this the race seem to be over very fast. I was able to run some great top speeds (107 kmph) and some 19 sec lap times which showed the car and engine had the speed but at this level there was just no way to come back. This left me very disappointed as I felt I let a lot of people down as the car and engine deserved a much better result than 8th.

I would like to thank my sponsors Team Serpent, Novarossi World, Sanwa, Xceed, RW Racing, Merlin and Serpent UK.

Also a special thanks to Michael Salven and Stef Helvensteijn and Claire/John/Muriel Russell

Mark Green

Written by :

Administrator