European Touring Series 2008 Round 3: Heemstede, The Netherlands

After a successful first and second round, the third round was held at (MACH) Heemstede, The Netherlands. MACH is the biggest club/track here in The Netherlands, and is also known as the home track of Serpent. As well as the Serpent Factory Team is the local competition pretty high, which will make the race exciting.

The race started at Friday with some free uncontrolled practice rounds.
The track may look easy, but it's pretty tricky. You can loose much time in the infield of the track.
In the Modified practice (shown right) it was the Dutch-vice champion Hugo van den Berg who was setting a great pace with an fastest lap of 16.27 seconds. The Dutch national champion Bart Wubben was second with a 16.36 seconds fastest lap. Jilles Groskamp was driving very consistent with a 16.52 second fastest laptime. It looks like the LRP Motors are having a slight advantage at this track.
Jimmy Maddison was the fastest man on Friday in the Pro Stock class with an fastest lap of 18.41 seconds. In second place was his Schumacher team-mate Ronald Besteman. Ronald and Jimmy have done some great teamwork working on their Schumacher MI3's.

Viktor Wilck and Marc Rheinard ran on Friday without any timing transponder, although their pace looked good. Here are some pictures of Marc Rheinard's SMC/Speed Passion powered Tamiya TRF416:

Click on the pictures for a bigger view

Saturday the day started with two controlled practices followed by four qualification rounds. The start of the was prety cold, which had some effect on the batteries. Jilles took the first qualifiar in front of Marc Rheinard and Hugo van den Berg. The Kyosho driver Vasco Christiaanse was the fastest in the stock class. Tamiya driver Chris van der Hagen finished second, and in Jimmy Maddison in the third spot.

Hugo van den Berg finished first in the second qualifier in front of Jilles Groskamp and Bart Wubben. Marc Rheinard and Viktor Wilck had some run-time issues on the last lap of this qualifier.  In the Pro Stock Vasco Christiaanse took also the second round in front of Ronald Bestman and Jimmy Maddison.
Jilles Groskamp won the third round where he finished in front of Hugo van den Berg and Luke van Essen. Viktor Wilck finished fourth with some run-time issues. The Tamiya team is running 3.5T Speed Passion brushless motors. Viktor will possibly switch on Sunday to a 4T motor to solve the runtime issues. In the Pro Stock Vasco Christiaanse (shown in the video at the left) secured his TQ by winning also the third round in front of Nicolai Nielsen and Ronald Bestman.

Jilles Groskamp securred his TQ in the fourth round (shown left) in front of Hugo van den Berg. Viktor Wilck had solved his run-time issues and finished third. In the Pro Stock Chris van der Hagen took the fourth round in front of Jimmy Maddison and Ronald Bestman. Vasco Christiaanse had already secured his TQ and didn't run this round to save his Sweep control tires for the finals.
Jilles Groskamp took the last qualifiar in front of Hugo van den Berg and Viktor Wilck. In the Stock class it was the Danish Serpent driver Nicolai Nielsen who took the win in the last qualifiar. This gave the next qualifying results:

Modified:

Stock:

The First A-Main Modified was lead by Jilles Groskamp although he was set under some pressure by Hugo van den Berg. Marc Rheinard had a great start from the seventh spot and was making some nice passes through the field. Hugo made a slight mistake at the Omega corner, from that one had Marc Rheinard close the gap. Marc eventually overtook Hugo, the battle for the second spot was still open though. The fight went on until Hugo made a little mistake during a attempt to pass Marc Rheinard. Hugo ended on the grass, which made Bart Wubben second in front of Viktor Wilck.

Marc Rheinard right after the first A-Main explaining his race.		The Tamiya TRF416's of Viktor Wilck and Marc Rheinard.		Dutch National Champion Jan van Steeg hadn't much luck during the event.

In the first Pro Stock A-Main it was Vasco Christiaanse who made a clean start leading in front of Chris van der Hagen. Chris was setting some presure with his Tamiya TRF416 on Vasco, but had his body caught up in the front wheel causing an end to his race. Joffrey Persijn took the second spot in front of Jimmy Maddison, who had his bad start recovered well.

Jilles Groskamp took the overall win in the second A-Main. Jilles was set under big pressure by Hugo van den Berg, but he stayed cool and didn't make any mistakes. Viktor Wilck finished third in front of Bart Wubben and Luke van Essen.
The second Pro-Stock A-Main saw a really exciting battle for the first position. Vasco Christiaanse and Chris van der Hagen had an early race accident on the straight giving the first spot to Nicolai Nielsen followed by Jimmy Maddison and George Spitteler. Jimmy had bumped Nicolai on the grass, while Vasco was catching the field. George was running in second a great steady pace (started the race from the seventh spot) with his Corally RDX-PHI and managed to overtake Jimmy and win the second A-Main.

Viktor Wilck from Sweden was really fast, but had some problems with his runtime.		Jilles Groskamp seccured his dominant overall win in second A-Main		George Spitteler had a great run in the second A-Main Pro Stock.

Although Jilles won the event in the first and second A-Main, he also had taken part of the third Main. In the third Main it was Viktor Wilck who had a really good start on his brand new tires and passed Hugo van den Berg at the Omega and also Jilles in second corner of the race. While Marc Rheinard was also running with new tires in the sixth, he was climbing up the field. Viktor Wilck was clearly the fastest at the moment and pulled a little gap, while behind Jilles and him there where some fights for the third place which was finaly taken by Marc Rheinard. With 25 seconds to go it was Marc who was closing the gap between him and Jilles Groskamp, who was out of run-time. After the pass on Jilles made Marc an incredible pass on Viktor Wilck (who was also running out of run-time) just a meter from the finishing line.

For the Pro Stock overall win it was all open. Vasco seemed to be the man to beat starting from pole, while George Spitteler had won the second main (but had to start from the seventh spot) and was on a great run after he had dominantly won the first local race here in MACH Heemstede. The race wasn't decided and the tensions grew for the start of the race.
The start of the second A-Main Pro-Stock went pretty smooth. Vasco Christiaanse went a bit wide in the Omega Corner and Chris van der Hagen took the first spot. From that moment on Vasco was setting big pressure on Chris, although a second place behind Chris would secure the win for Vasco. On the third spot was Jimmy Maddison followed by George Spitteler, who had started the race from the seventh spot and was slowly closing the gap. With a bit more than 2 minutes to go had Vasco while making a move on Chris touched him in the back. Chris' Tamiya was up side down and had to been flipped by a marshall. Meanwhile was Vasco gently waiting on Chris. As a result of the sportsmanlike behavior of Vasco was Jimmy Maddison leading the race in front of George Spitteler who was really pushing his pace. With less than two minutes to go George made a mistake and hitted a curb which had launched his car in a front flip back on the rubber tyres. George had some luck here and went on, while Chris van der Hagen was closing in the gap. With 10 seconds to go the racers where on their last lap, but order didn't change. After the race it wasn't really clear who had won the race overall. Scotty Ernst had explained that George was the winner because his second A-Main win was 1.31 seconds faster than the third A-Main win of Jimmy Maddison.

This gave the following overall standings:

Modified:

Pro-Stock:

Some more pictures:

Jilles Groskamp's Tamiya TRF416
Marc Rheinard's Tamiya TRF416
Viktor Wilck's Tamiya TRF416
George Spitteler's winning Corally RDX-PHI
Top qualifier Vasco Christiaanse's Kyosho Stallion 'Shin Edition'
Rene Cornella's (Serpent Designer) modified S400
Modified A-Main cars.		Jilles Groskamp's car.		Jilles set under pressure by Hugo van den Berg.
The start of A-Main Modified number 3.		Marc Rheinard chased by Luke van Essen and Tony Vredenberg.		Marc Rheinard in front of Rene Cornella.
Vasco Christiaanse (Kyosho).		Chris van der Hagen (Tamiya).		Chris chased by Vasco in the third A-Main Stock.
Jimmy Maddison (Schumacher).		George Spitteler (Corally).		Joffrey Persijn (Tamiya).
A-Main Stock action.		Chris van der Hagen, Nicolai Nielsen and Jimmy Maddison.		Peter Meurs and Tom Eekhof.
Pictures are still under construction, stay tuned...

Videos from the finals:

Videos made by RedRC