Grand Prix des 3 frontiers Longwy TRF419 race report

David Joos has given us another race report. His son Florian is running the TRF419 with the 25mm towers. Florian is only 12 but already showing a lot of speed.

On the weekend of 23 and 24 January, Florian and I set off for the Grand Prix des 3 frontiers in Longwy, France http://www.mrc-longwy.fr/gp3f/
This is a highly regarded international race with a strong field of both stock and modified drivers. Amongst the entries, there were Ronald Volker, Viljami Kutvonen, Marc Fisher and Olivier Buyltinck and in stock Jan Ratheisky, Max Mächler, Martin Christensen and some 103 other drivers.

Florian was up for a strong challenge!

When the first practices were over, they made a ranking based on the 3 fastest consecutive laps. As these conditions are similar to those we are used to in Belgium (medium grip carpet), Florian found himself in 24th position.

After final qualifying he was in 40th position. His first A final went quite well and he finished 3rd. The 2nd qualifying was absolute mayhem as the grip levels were really high at that point and his car kept on grip rolling.

Florian and Ronald

I asked some setup tips to Ronald Volker and Jan Ratheisky. The young and very good Dutch driver Mitchell Van Es gave him some tips on how to improve his driving (basically enter the corner slower and accelerate smoother out of the corner).

It might be interesting to share the quite drastic setup changes I made to make the car better:

• Instead of using 2 x 2 screws in the motor mount, I inserted all 3 of them. I also inserted the screw on the top deck. This way, the car was more rigid.
• Ronald Volker told me that if your car grip rolls, you need to make it softer. I therefore used 40wt oil in front, 45 in the back and used the quite soft Muchmore silver springs. The harder Yokomo blue springs I used before worsened the grip rolls!
• I moved both upper shock positions one degree more inwards.
• I made the car a bit wider up front by adding two 0,5mm shims on the wheel axles.
• I added a 1mm shim under the front inner camber links. This increases the roll center a bit and makes the car push a bit more in the middle and exit of the corner.

Note the mix of screws, this was to help compensate for the heavier Muchmore battery (307g)

With these changes, the car was very fast. He was challenging for 3rd position when he made a small mistake that cost him a lot of time. His final position was 34rd out of 104, which isn’t too bad for a 12 year old!

Here is the set-up

Thanks for that David. Well done to Florian, it looks like we need to keep watching this space to see a new contender in 1/10 onroad :)