Hupo Honigl reports from Pre Season testing

New Team Durango signing Hupo Honigl attended last weekend’s pre-Season race held at the Rhein-Mein Circuit in Bischofsheim, Germany and filed this report. A lot good drivers attended the race at Bischofscheim including Neumann, Drescher, Ronnefalk, Svenson, Reckward, as well as many top German drivers. Gerd made some subtle changes to a couple of parts and all I can say is that they work awesome. In the first practice run the car felt already pretty good, but the shocks were too soft and also the diff oils were too soft. I changed from 5k-5k-2k to 10k-10k-2k and changed the shockoil to 10 harder in the front and 5 harder in the rear. This helped a lot.

In qualifying I experimented with the front suspension link positions – in the end the car was really good, and I was right on pace. I finished 4th – 4th – 3rd – 2nd – 1st, and ended up 3rd overall. In the semi I had a pretty hard battle with Neumann – about 3 mins before the end I was in the lead, but then a lapped driver took me out which cost me about 6 seconds. I missed TQ by 4 seconds.

For the final I went from M2 compound (medium) to XTR (hard) I was 100% sure that would be better because the weather was quite warm and the track was very hard-packed.  At the beginning of the final I took it easy, waiting for the tyres to start working – but unfortunatly they never really got better – so I started to push a little harder. By this time I was in 2nd, but the gap was already pretty big to Jörn.

I pushed the car harder and it handled very well and I got a little closer to Jörn. At about 5 minutes before the end, I was only 2 corners away from him, but then another backmarker hit me, and Jörn was gone.

Well done to Jörn who won the race.  I finished 2nd with Reckward 3rd. Martin Achter did a great job for Team Durango, and he also made it to the main final – but he had an issue with his cluch early in the run. With a little more experience and fine-tuning the car got even better, and I felt very comfortable with it!  I really like this car and I am sure other RC racers will love it too.

Source: Durango [team-durango.com]