AOC - Adelaide

The 2nd round of the Asian On Road Championships was held in the city of Adelaide, in southern Australia. The event saw some 100 entries split in 5 different classes: 1/10 TC Modified, 13.5 Stock, 21.5 Stock, Formula 1 as well as 1/12. This race series hosted by the American Scotty Ernst, is proving to be increasingly popular.

The race was held at the permanent indoor asphalt track of Hobby Habit in Adelaide. This medium sized, very flat and high bite track was a lot of fun to drive. Thursday started off with open practice for everyone.

Qualifying started off fairly well as I held the lead throughout Q1 only to lose out on the very last lap. I managed to TQ in Q4 however on old tires, and decided to stick to my tire strategy, where I would save 3 sets of tires for the finals, and hoping it would be enough to qualify at least 2nd overall. Unfortunately the strategy would back fire on me as Ryan Maker would TQ the last round on new tires, as Ronald pulled off, which gave him 2nd place on the grid. I had to settle for 3rd, which meant that instead of being able to challenge Ronald for the lead, I had to fight with Ryan for 2nd place. In the end it worked out as I could find my way past him in A1 and A3, after some crowd pleasing fights, especially in A3, as Ryan did a great job keeping that door shut. Anyway, 2nd place is a decent result but obviously I am disappointed to not been able to have at least had a chance to fight for the win, considering that my car was very competitive.

The nature of this track with high bite, and many slow and technical corners, I did a few interesting setup changes. First of all I opted to use the ARS rear suspension as it just helped the car to turn better. I was also using the new PSS shocks, which seems to be a basic setting for us on asphalt these days. I was using a very thick rear anti-roll bar (1.5mm) to help the car turn better on-power, as well as preventing the car from traction rolling on corner entry.

In the stock TC 13.5 class, it was XRAY driver Alex Illevski who showed a strong pace throughout the entire race, and finally managed to take the 3rd and final podium spot after a great drive. Also very fast, Damien Zarb with a T4’15, was in contention for a podium finish but had to settle for 4th overall. Well done guys!

XRAY was victorious in the Formula category where the X1 took a double win in the hands of Dan Maher and Mark Wallin. Another strong result for the X1!

The 21.5 TC class was won by an XRAY as well with Patrick Saelze behind the wheel. Congrats Patrick!

I want to send out a big thanks to everyone who made this trip possible; thanks to XRAY, Nathan Reese, Ari Bakla, Scotty Ernst among others! I hope to come back next year to this great country, where I have met great people and made many new friends!

Modified TC results:

1. Ronald Völker

2. Alexander Hagberg – XRAY T4’15

3. Ryan Maker

Stock 21.5 TC results:

1. Patrick Saelzle - XRAY T4'15

2. John Karnaros

3. Matt Pimblett

Stock 13.5 TC results:

1. Tom De Nardis

2. Tim Gaukroger

3. Alex Illevski – XRAY T4’15

Formula 1 results:

1. Dan Maher – XRAY X1

2. Mark Wallin – XRAY X1

3. Scott Rawlings

Source: A. Ilievski