ToniSport Onroad Series Andernach. Florian Joos Report and TRF419X set-ups

Florian Joos participated at the Tonisport Onroad Series (TOS) race in Andernach, on June 4th.
The track in Andernach is ideal for electric touring cars. The kerbs are just perfect and can be used as part of the racing line, but any abuse will launch you into space.

The layout can be changed (a bit like Snetterton) and this time the organisers chose a fast but challenging track.

Saturday was normally reserved for practice in heats, but due to the bad weather only 2 rounds of practice were run. The DJK Andernach team did a stellar job to offer a dry track just one hour after the rain stopped, but unfortunately two hours later the heavens opened again.

With the limited amount of track time it meant that Florian was a bit unhappy with his car. The fast directional changes meant that we needed to look for a different setup.

After a few tweaks in the pits, Florian was quite happy with way in which the the stock TRF419X handled. He qualified in second behind Tamiya guru Dai Sakaguchi, but we got close to almost getting a TQ. Florian kept that P2 for the final result.

In Mod, his car was under-steering a bit too much, so he couldn’t attack. In the last final, his car was much better and he ended a bit closer to Thimo Weissbauer, a young German Awesomatix driver, who is widely regarded as one of the biggest talents in the sport.

Considering the limited practice on the Saturday ensuring we were chasing a set-up, we were happy with the two second places that we had achieved.

Overall it was a great weekends racing, and a good turnout with fellow TRF racers.

I will try to explain some of the setup changes we made to improve the handling for the cars on this fast circuit.

Stock Set-up

Instead of using our own setup with the suspension arms moved to the front to get more initial steering, we kept Christian Donath’s setup as a basis. Christian is a top contender at the ETS races, so he knows a bit more about setup than I do :)

On Christian’s setup, the arms are moved to the back to get more steering in the middle and exit of the corner.

He also uses a one piece rear front suspension mount in order to increase the steering.

In order to cope with the fast directional changes, I put the front and rear dampers in the 3 position (so quite upward).

To get a bit more steering, I also reduced the rear toe-in to 1.5 degrees (XA-B block in the rear). The last adjustment I did was use a 3.2 rear spring to get more corner speed.

Note the shims under the top deck

Because we used a bit heavier GensAce batteries, I omitted the 30g center weight and replaced it with the Torque rod, which has already been tested on the RC Racer blog.

To keep the motor cool, I also used the RC Racer fan mount, which works brilliantly.

Modified Set-up

Basically the same setup as the stock one, except for:

- 1.75mm topdeck from the WS kit, but without shims. Florian preferred the feeling, the car was a bit more flexible.

With the extra speed of mod I mounted the D blocks in the rear to give me 2.5 degres of rear toe-in.

In the front I had 05F and 05E 1 piece front blocks, giving me a little front sweep. The front arms are also 1mm further towards the front

Sometimes you see the top guys warming up their diffs before the race. I always thought it was for show. Thimo Weissbauer’s dad told me that Florian’s car was getting better and better towards the end of the race, and that I should warm his diff up as well. This gives you more steering from the start and it actually really helped!