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EUROS 2010 DAY TWO - 2wd Qualifying.

It was raining hard at 4am and whilst the early risers for qualifying didn't experience too much rain it started to come down harder as the morning went on. Racing didn't seem like it was going to kick off at the scheduled 8:30am - the track didn't look too bad by this point but as 8:30 came and went it was clear there wasn't going to be any racing for a while.

Like a flashback to the last time we were here for the warmup / EFRA GP in May - the track was well and truly flooded by mid-morning and you couldn't even stand on the dirt areas for marshalling - no chance of racing!


Someone pierced Dave Belstons beer can causing him to mess himself

oops

Schumacher team modification expert - Mike Cockerill

Ellis cutting some tyres.

The officials came and announced that racing would be halted until 12:00 to decide what to do - another announcement later in the morning with the rain still falling extended this time to 13:30 at which point it'd be decided whether to run at all today - and if so, only one round of practice and one round of qualifying would be run.

Some joker glued all this gear to our table!

A happy garden gnome was among the many items of TAT that were glued to our table.

This car got STUCK to our table!

With boredom setting in, some of the drivers took to tomfoolery and various fun and games to entertain themselves. After a brief return to the hotel to try and fix our reporting laptop we came back to find some un-named guys had been to the local 1-euro cheap tack shop and bought various random objects to adhere to our table.

 

Fabien Simonini, the French Italian guy From England. Offering up his lucious cake material.

Rain!

 

 

With not much else to do (other than wreaking havok on our table) some racers turned their hand to tyre tuning. 'Editing' their front tyres to suit the muddy conditions outside but always with the vague hope that they'd not be needed.

Tuning the tyres to make them dig into the soft dirt more seemed to be the order of the day and whilst the rules prohibit cut-and-shut tyres, adding parts and taking others away seems to be OK.

Cragg had this dodgy looking dremel job

Ellis Stafford with his rear-tyre / front-tyre combo

(always rains)

Nicolas Beneventi with his SK1 creation

Nicolas Beneventi from France has built his own 2WD buggy - the SK1 - which has already (sort of) won the French national series - with the only two drivers in contention of the win both running the car it's sure to be this buggy that will take the victory.

Three drivers had the car including Nicolas himself at this years Euros and all the cars are virtually the same. Using some XFactory X6 parts on the rear end and Associated B4 / GT4 parts up front.

The main chassis is a carbon fibre tub - created from flat plates bolted together with some machined aluminium 'tabs'. The outer edges of the tub are all hand profiled to give a smooth rounded-edge look despite the angular construction.

The rear end uses lots of intricate metalwork which helps mount the X6 gearbox and the shock tower.

 

Rear end used a lot of custom metal which is all really nicely finished.

Metal brackets secure the side carbon walls to the main plate of the chasssis to form the tub.

Chassis 'tub' edges are smoothly profiled

X6 gearbox

Chassis overview shows the stick pack running down the centre of the chassis.

Associated nitro front end enables the mounting of the B4 suspension.

Nicolas created the body and wing for these buggies also

Nicolas says the buggies are 'only for friends' as costs are too high to produce for sale to the general public. Of this version of the buggy there are 8 in existance in total. We're told the buggy is very safe and easy to drive.

 

The moisture outiside spoild the day for many would-be racers.

Team managers from across Europe met to agree on a workable solution.

The outcome was fed back to many followers.

Whilst this cheeky duo looked for mischief outside in the rain.

Spreading sawdust started on the straight

BBK Rob takes some temperature readings as the sun started to warm & dry the track at last.

Georg Kotzinger

Georg Kotzinger from Germany was running a pretty standard looking Associated B4.1 buggy - but we got a tip off about his unique gearbox which looks like nothing special from the outside.

Inside however - he's got something pretty strange going on. The differential is a geared diff that he's been running for the past three years and ABSOLUTELY won't give away it's internal secrets to us mere mortals.

The differential has the usual 'differential' action so one wheel will turn more around a corner but most of the time it locks or has a limited slip action. If the car lifts a wheel when going round a corner for instance, the car wont lose momentum and the wheel with the most grip (the one on the ground) will have full drive. Interesting - wish we could get to see inside! :(

Georg will run the Associated B44 in 4WD - nothing too exciting there. But Georg has mostly raced his super-cool RC10B4 4WD converted belt-driven buggy - which he's raced for the past few seasons. The reason he says he chose not to race the buggy at these championships is purely down to the rules which prohibit the changing of chassis - so if he breaks a part on his custom buggy he would have to machine / create new parts and can't just use common off the shelf parts like the B44 can.

The B4 4WD buggy maintains the rear-motor layout and even the gearbox is pretty much unchanged. The power is transferred via a small pulley on the layshaft where the bearing would usually sit (the bearing has been moved further inboard) and feeds the drive belt down to the front of the car where Georg has created his own one-way differential.

It's a very cool design which reminds us of the MIP creations from the 1980's and early 90's.

The 4WD converted B4.1 that Georg has been using for a while.

Discreet pulley that takes power to the front end

The belt runs above the cells and a carbon rod braces the chassis to stop the belt twisting things.

Georg's own oneway differential

 

The front of Georg's B4WD

The front 'kick up' is lowered to 15 degrees for the 4WD

The unasuming green gearbox on Georg's B4.1 holds some secret magic inside.

Young Danish driver /photographer and super lego builder (hey, Lego is from Denmark right?) Jesper Rasmussen (danish #1 oOple fan) spent many an hour whittling this awesome oople homage out of lego to show his love for us! Awesome work!!!!

As 14:30 passed by the word was still that we were going to see one round of practice only - with three qualifiers tomorrow before finals. This didn't sit too well with most drivers we spoke to - who were concerned that they'd be potentially wreacking havok with their cars in the mud for no particular reason and that things should have been cancelled already.

Another update that things would be decided upon more at around 16:00 and about 15:30 the sun finally shoved aside the rain and the temperatures began to once again soar upward.

The locals had been hard at work trying to make the track raceable - and much like they did at the warmup /EFRA GP, they laid down a heavy coating of sawdust / wood shavings to try and soak up the worst of it. By the time the sun came out however, it might have been more of a hinderance to the drying process since it blocked the sun from the dirt.

Finally at 17:10 - with the single round of practice set to run to decide heat-order at 17:30 the decision to cancel today completely was taken. The drivers had been at the track for many hours and most were glad to finally get away and start thinking about a busy day tomorrow.

The sun started to dry the track but even with the extreme measure of covering everything in wood shavings - the

              

 

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