Race report by Mustafa ALP

Our Nationals round 2 took place at wonderful Bumod facility in Bursa. After ETS round 5 in Holland, I arrived home Tuesday and I got 3 days to build two 747 kits(one for customer) before heading to track. Luckily cars got together really easy and I found myself doing my final preparations on friday at the track.

As soon as I finished my car, I started practising and first thing I noticed was how different the car reacted, compared to 733. It had smoother corner entry, more cornerspeed and more rear grip. I can’t say I tried lots of different setups because car was already working very well with standart setup. So I kept my mind busy with trying different things, such as my own design rim covers, rear diffusers and different tyre additives. As we ran out of Xceed engines at shop, I had to use my old engine from last year, which was not so fast and stable at this full speed track.

In 10 minute qualifiers I TQ ed the race with a 7 second gap over 2nd place driver Taner Timurlenk, even though I had 2 pitstops and he had 1.
Rest of the field was not close to our pace. I knew Taner had a very smooth driving style which was always his advantage over 45minute final, where tyre wear is the biggest factor to win or lose. But with 747, I noticed that I also had very low tyre wear.

In final I used 42 rears and 40 fronts. At start I and Taner stormed and quickly opened a gap over the entire field. Then Taner made a mistake, and I had a 1 lap lead over him. Race continued like this until I had an engine cut when refueling, this costed me one lap. I left the pits just in front of Taner, and we were again fighting for the lead. About 20 minutes to go, Taner had a mechanical problem, which relaxed me as I now had more than 6 laps of lead over 2nd place. I cruised the rest of the race to take the win.

I want to thank my sponsors Evilhobbyshop, Serdar Aytemiz, Serpent and Xceed for their support. Next race is Turkish EP Touring Nationals Rnd 2.