Karlsen earned first-career Norwegian National Series round win

0 Sept. 14, 2016, 11:59 a.m.

By Aaron Waldron
LiveRC.com

Race report from XRAY:
www.teamxray.com

XB2 wins Norwegian National series R4

On Thursday we travelled 8 hours north to Levanger, Norway for the 4th and last round of the Norwegian 1/10 2WD and 4WD Buggy National Series.

This was my very first time at the track here in Levanger and unfortunately we only got 1.5 battery packs of practice with my new and updated XRAY XB2 before it started to rain.

And since it rained for most of the evening and the forecast said it would be dry on Saturday we spent time working on our 4WD setup for the expected wet race day on Sunday instead.

On Saturday we started 2WD qualifying in the dry and we immediately started making some small changes to the setup of my 2WD as well as getting used to the grip and pace of the track in the dry.

After qualifications were done I was 2nd behind the very fast local driver and close to being able to match him on pace.

For the first final I almost managed to keep up with the #1 car but a few small bobbles here and there from myself lead to him getting a gap of a few seconds which he held to the end.

For the second final I was able to stay with the leader and put more pressure on him and he made a mistake on lap 2 which handed over the lead to me. A lead I held to the finish line.

This meant it was all down to the 3rd and last final.

Again I was able to put pressure on the #1 car which lead to a small mistake by him on lap 2 and I could take the lead and eventually a comfortable win.

This was my first win in the 2WD class in the Norwegian National series and I'm really pleased with the result considering this was my first time on this technical and fast track fighting with some very fast local drivers.