Last Weekend Rd. 1 of the 1/10 20mm west-german championship was held at the beautiful track of MCK-Dormagen near Cologne.
Team Serpent arrived on early Saturday to ensure having a good setup to be competitive. At the beginning, everybody, not only Team Serpent, struggled with the low grip level. With the sun coming out, the grip-level went fine but tire wear was the main thing to be careful with.
Rain affected the end of the Training on Saturday and held on to early Sunday morning.
With a “semi-dry” track and a very cloudy sky, nearly everybody used his first run to have a good result in case of it would start raining again.
The drivers were very lucky and the track kept on drying.
The fastest times where driven in leg 4 of qualifying with Rene Püpke heading the timesheets, being the only driver to achieve 18 laps in the 5 minute runs.
Rene was followed by his team mates Benny Lehmann in 2nd and Michael Salven in 3rd , so after qualifying it was a clear 1-2-3 for Team Serpent.
In Semi-final B, Arndt Bernhardt was able to take the win in front of team mate Benny Lehmann. Lucien Zens, who won the quarter final before, also was able to make it into the final taking the 5th spot.
In Semi-final A, Rene Püpke took the win with an impressive advantage of to laps. Also Björn Hartlage, one of the Team Serpent newcomers, was able to make it into the final taking the 4th spot. Due to a broken Muffler-Spring 747 Designer Michael Salven, who was starting from 2nd, had no chance to make it to the final. But Michael didn´t retire and tried to catch up to the field. With an impressive performance he even improved the lap-record by a huge amount of 3/10th (!!!) of a second.
Due to the extremely tire wear everybody knew that the 30 Minute final would be a tactical thing.
Rene Püpke, starting from Pole, also knew that and started with a controlled pace, followed by Bernd Rausch in 2nd.
After 10 Minutes, Rene was in front but the race had to be aborted because of a blackout which also affected the timekeeping.
Luckily for Arndt Bernhardt, who “killed” his engine right at the starting grid.
With a short break of 30 minutes, final was started again, and Rene again started racing calm and really tactical. He saved tires all the time, and even was as cool to let Kyosho´s Bernd Rausch drive by.
At the 25 minute mark everything payed off!
Bernd who was leading the field with a small advantage began struggling with tire wear and Rene was able to get back into front by an awesome pitstop of his father Arno Püpke.
Bernd´s problems got worse and he even had to retire.
After 30 Minutes it was Rene who crossed the finish line in 1st Positon with a huge advantage of 3 laps! Benny Lehmann, who even got a really good pace, was hit by an engine-cut off. He managed to finish in 4th Position. Due to awesome pitstops of his Girlfriend Claudi, Arndt “engine killing” Bernhardt, was able to take the 5th spot.
With Lucien in 7th and Björn in 10th, Team Serpent really made a good job by putting 5 Cars into the main final! WELL DONE!
With Michael showing the potential of the new 747 and the car being shipped in a few days, we all are looking forward to a even more successful season!
Thanks to Uwe Baldes and Dieter Fleischer from nitro-west.de for the pictures!
See you on the track!
Daniel Thiele