Kurzbuch and Fankhauser won Swiss nitro on-road nationals opening round

0 April 13, 2016, 12:16 a.m.

By Aaron Waldron
LiveRC.com

Race report from Shepherd Micro Racing:
www.team-shepherd.com

Last weekend the first round of the Swiss 1/8 nationals took place at the MRC St. Gallen track in Sitterdorf. Already during qualification on Saturday reigning Swiss champion Simon Kurzbuch showed a stunning performance when he TQed the race by winning 4 out of 4 qualification runs and setting a new track record. In the semi finals Silvio Hächler pushed a lot while Simon made a safe run what resulted in starting position 2 for Simon for the main final. The main final saw a close battle between Simon and Silvio but after a few laps it was Simon who took over the lead. In the last minutes of the race the gap between Silvio and Simon was less than one second until Silvio made a small mistake in the final lap. In the end Simon won the race 5 seconds in front of Silvio Hächler with Christophe Pethoud completing the podium 7 laps down. With Roland Stalder in 5th and Jyrg Nydegger in 9th position it was a strong performance of the whole Team Shepherd Switzerland.

Race report from XRAY:
www.teamxray.com

NT1 wins Swiss Nationals R1 - by Patrick Fankhauser

The first of 6 races of this year’s Swiss Nationals was held in Sitterdorf. After some wet training runs the track dried up just in time for the first of four qualifying runs.

After a solid first run with no errors, I placed third behind the NT1 Pilot Traugott Schär and Raphael Wicki. In that moment I knew that my car, had a good opportunity for a top finish. After all the qualifying runs, I still remained third behind the two. The first nine positions were all XRAY Pilots.

After a strong semi-final Raphael was able to take the pole position for the final.

The first three laps of the 30 minute A-Finals were somewhat unclear und confusing and were marked with accidents and incidents. Michael Schäfer who was in 7th place in the grid, used these mistakes to his advantage and fought his way up to the leading position. I caught up to him before the first fuel-stop and also was able to take advantage after a little mistake of him. At half time Raphael Wicki caught up to me and put me under a lot of pressure. But i was able to defend my Position to the end.

The car and the engine performed perfectly this weekend. The car was fast and always easy to handle.

A big thank you to all T+M Models who played a big part of the successful weekend.