Serpent's Paolo Morganti won Pacific Cup in Peru [GALLERY]

0 March 10, 2016, 2:46 p.m.

By Aaron Waldron
LiveRC.com

Race report from Serpent:
www.serpent .com

2016 Pacific Cup Report

This past weekend I traveled to Peru to attend the annual Pacific Cup. The race program is very straight forward with practice on Friday, Qualifications on Saturday and Finals on Sunday.

The track is really fast with high speed sweepers, a wide open chicane with a couple of hairpins. It flows really well but it's tricky to find the best setup in order to go fast but not destroy the tires, specially in the GT class which is the one i decided to run. It has also banked corners, some with positive and others with negative camber, which add more ingredients to the setup equation.

After spending Friday testing some setups, helping some fellow racers and hanging out at the track, it was time on Saturday for the four round of qualification. My car was easy to drive and really good on tire wear, but it was a little bit too slow, specially on the high speed section, having too much under steering. I kept looking for the solution during the qualifiers rounds and by the 4th round i had pretty much figure out the problem. Unfortunately i did not had a clean run and i was not able to improve my previous time finishing 4th and missing the direct final. I decided to prepare my car for the mains and use the semifinal as an another chance to look for more speed.

Sunday was the main day. My race was the first one. I did some extra setup adjustments and my car was even better. I played really safe in the pits with early pit stops and I was able to win the race and be fifth in the grid for the one hour final. I really liked how the car was reacting to the changes i was performing and for the main i decided to do some more. In the main i had a great start and at the end of lap one i was in second place, chasing my team mate Fabrizio Martello. We both knew we had to be fast in order to try to build a lead but at the same time we had to be be smooth in order to save the tires. We ran one two for about 10 minutes with similar pace until Fabrizio ran into some problems. This gave me the lead and the ability to focus on build an advantage and at the same time save as much tire as possible. The strategy paid off and after a trouble free one hour final, i was able to win. I was really happy!!

I will like to give a special thanks to the passionate group of people that are behind the organization of this event.

Also thanks to my sponsors and for their great products: Serpent, Picco, Desoto Racing, Byron, Sanwa, Arrowmax, Matrix, Avid, Blast RC, Xceed, Veytrex Lab

Last but not least thanks to Team Serpent Peru and Team Serpent Ecuador for the great times. All see you guys soon.

- Paolo

Photos by Alfredo Scerpella Iturburu