EUROS 2010 DAY ONE - 2wd Practice.

The pitting hall reached full capacity fairly early in the day as drivers from all over Europe arrived bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready for the week of fun and competition ahead. Or something like that. Our reporting table had been provided early on and was conveniently located next to Team Durango UK enabling us to keep an eye on their behaviour and report back to THE BOSS if necessary. With this in mind the team remained at their tables throughout the morning, wrenching on their cars with dedication and turning up to each practice on time. The format of the day would be 6 rounds of practice at 5 minutes each, with drivers expected to marshal after each practice run. The schedule would be tight, with drivers having just one minute to vacate the rostrum and allow the next heat to alight. Still though, if this all goes to plan each driver should get ample opportunity to find their optimum set up throughout the day. With Rob Nelson from BBK timing on the case and a team of competent EFRA organisers, this shouldn't be a problem.

The drivers get a pass at driver registration that they have to wear to access the pits and track areas - with beefy security guards on standby like the one above. The drivers get until 18:00 to get their cars into technical inspection to be scrutineered - with stickers applied to the chassis & wing(s) so things can't be changed once checked.

With drivers starting at various points on the track and at various times during practice - getting a reliable 'time' for the sessions isn't possible. But - you can get lap times of course and those tell the story of who's fastest

Practice round 1 - Fastest Laps.
Lee Martin 26.07, Hupo Honigl 26.61, Paul Bradby 26.74, Andy Griffiths (!)27.09, Hauleitner 27.14, Kev Lee 27.29

Practice round 2 - Fastest Laps.
Jorn Neumann 25.97, Lee Martin 26.15, Bradby 26.49, Lee 26.55, Cockerill 26.57, Honigl 26.65

Practice round 3 - Fastest Laps.
Jorn Neumann 25.60, Lee Martin 25.66, Ellis Stafford 25.82, Neil Cragg 25.92, Paul Bradby 26.08, Peter Pinisch 26.10, Martin Kreil 26.20.

Half way through the days practice it seemed like Lee Martin was up there with consistently quick times - along with Jorn Neumann who was the quickest in rounds 2 and 3. After round two the track got swept of loose dirt for the first time as laptimes continued to fall with the track 'grooving up' as they call it.

Neil Cragg on his way to being QUICK in round four.	Adam Skelding flys the prototype Team Durango DEX210 buggy.

Tom Yardy is the #2 Yokomo man	Ben Jemison has an Austrian clone called Austrian Ben.

Thanks to Team Durango for helping us with costs to attend this race and report on it!

Neil Cragg came bursting through the 25-second barrier in round four, with a fastest single lap of 24.91 seconds - the first sub-25 of the day.

	RUDE BITS have a bunch of cool new bits on Lee Martins Tamiya buggies. These 'special edition' parts are all chromed for added bling factor - though this makes them hard to photograph nicely they DO look good in real life honest. Rude Bits parts are all made from brass and are designed to add weight to balance cars. Some tamiya rude parts - TRF511 lipo tray parts. Lee Martin's TRF201X is loaded down with rudebits.

Practice round 4 - Fastest Laps.
Cragg 24.91, Martin 25.14, Neumann 25.32, Pinisch 25.43, Stafford 25.44, Honigl 25.54

Practice round 5 - Fastest Laps.
Neumann 24.78, Cragg 24.91, Kev Lee 25.01, Lee Martin 25.05, Kreil 25.13, Rheinard 25.18, Stafford 25.20.

Practice round 6 - Fastest Laps.
Lee Martin 24.68, Neumann 24.84, Rheinard 24.94, Cragg 25.00, Pinisch 25.05, Honigl 25.17, Stafford 25.21

Fastest lap by the end of the practice day went to the warmup winner Lee Martin - every round saw faster times as the track grooved up.5

^ Andy Griffiths went for some backflip action in the final round of practice on day 1. Griff even managed a pass whilst backflipping - and managed to RUB IT IN HARD by landing on the poor guy. KerrrrruncH!

After the days practice was over the clouds started to look threatening as the skies darkened. The opening ceremony which is a custom at these european championship events was the last thing on the days schedule and kicked off a little late at around 18:30. Organising the chaos was the EFRA chiefs and the local Mayor of Traiskirchen. The teams lined up to crackley patriotic tunes and came out in order to line up around the length of the main straight and around the bottom corner.

It's always a bit cringeworthy but a good laugh - the local mayor could only speak German but aroused an incredibly huge cheer with his passionate speech which no-one could understand but was apparently positive about these great championships and thanking the international racers for attending. The cheering clearly excited the Mayor and in unison with the cheering his enthusiastic speec became ever more so - great stuff.

Many drivers countries chose RED as their shirt colour!	Beer was used by British drivers

....and Vodka	British hooligans

Belgium warriors were the first out

The British team were the biggest as always - and by a long way the loudest also.

The serious stuff happens tomorrow with the start of qualifying after a couple of properly timed practice rounds which also go toward sorting the start order of the heats for round one of qualifying. Three rounds of qualifying round off the day with a further two rounds on Wednesday before finals begin.

Rental rally cars are great and we got a free ride with Ellis Stafford in his rally Opel Astra. More to come on this later in the week we're sure.	This racer was exhausted