Volker won Mod Touring, XRAY's Rathiesky doubled at ETS third round

0 April 12, 2016, 11:51 p.m.

By Aaron Waldron
LiveRC.com

Race report from XRAY:
www.teamxray.com

XRAY at the 3rd round of the ETS series

The XRAY team was in full effect at the 3rd round of the immensely popular ETS series, this time held in Wels, Austria, at a big hobby fair, where a big and fast carpet track was laid out in front of a big crowd. The traction levels came up quite good as always, and our team showed a strong pace in every class.

In Modified, it was a close fight for TQ between Ronald, Marc and Bruno Coelho. Finally Bruno managed to put his XRAY car on the 2nd spot on the grid after a good performance. I had to settle for 4th after a couple of decent rounds.

The finals went on with Ronald taking the win, just followed by Bruno, who had the pace, but lacked the consistency to make it through and pass Ronald. Marc rounded out the podium in 3rd, with myself in 4th place. It was a hard track to overtake on, as most carpet tracks. The finals did feature some clean and good racing.

We basically started with our set-up from the last ETS round, where we had a very good car. With some minor adjustments, we were eventually right on pace also at this track. This shows that we have found a very good basic setup for carpet this year, also knowing what option parts to use in particular. For example, the Alu Flex Chassis (#301141) has proven to be a good item for Volante tires on the ETS carpet! Its a must have for any serious racer.

In the Stock class, qualifying was closer than ever. Eventually the XRAY team driver Jan Ratheisky managed to put together a fast and clean run to take the overall TQ just in front of fellow countryman Valentin Hettrich. Marek Cerny had to settle for 4th on the grid, but also with the pace to challenge for TQ. Mattia Collina and Tom Kragefski also made the final for XRAY with their T4 2016 cars! Well done guys!

The finals turned out to be messy affairs on all three occasions. Jan eventually managed to secure the win after two straight A final wins. Worth mentioning was Tom Kragefskis run from 10th to 5th overall in the final standings. Quite an impressive job! XRAY had the most cars in the final of any brand (4 cars).

The Formula class belonged to Jan Ratheisky as usual. He was the man to beat throughout practice, qualifying and the finals with the fastest and most consistent car in the field! Jan is looking very good to repeat his overall ETS title win by the end of this season! Keep it going mate.

Bruno says: "Great weekend for XRAY! We finished 1st in Formula, 1st in Stock class and 2nd in modified! My car worked really well throughout the weekend, and even though I had some problems with my second set of tires, which made my car feel strange in the finals, I was able to fight with Volker. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to overtake him. The season is still open and we have three different winners in three races, and with my second place this weekend I bumped up to the first place on the ETS board with one point in front of the second place, so I think we are really headed to a great season. I want to congratulate Jan Ratheisky for the great work in Formula and Stock class, is impressive how much this guy works. I want also to congratulate to Dionys for his B main win, some misfortune in the qualifiers got him out of the A main, but he definitely has the pace to fight in the A main - next time you will do it mate. Thank you to all XRAY drivers for all support and hospitality during the races, hope I can manage to keep in touch with all of you."