Robinson wins at Midlands Astroturf Masters

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Mike Garrison

0 April 2, 2012, 7:42 a.m.

 

I was out trying a complete new electric package, with the aim of also testing out and improving the setup on the DEX410 V3 big bore shocks.

Round 1.
I started out a bit slow with trying to get to grips with my new system and also finding the ride of the shocks to be a bit hard, proved this round to be a difficult qualifier. Only making 4th in the round, and leaving me having to make some changes and plenty of room for improvement for the next run.

Round 2.
With tweaking the drag brake and gearing up to try and tame the new system and changing the pistons in the rear end of the car improved the handling quite a lot. The car felt a lot more controllable and there was less kick up on the back end, but running brand new tyres caused a bit of grip roll. Fortunately I got away with the grip roll enough to hold onto 2nd in the round. This time showing that the car was more on pace and more controllable than before.

Round 3.
I was rather happy with the car from round 2. But to eliminate the grip roll that I experienced I decided to try a light roll-bar on the rear end. By doing this though, I felt it restricted the cars handling a bit and wasn’t so good mid corner or over bumps. I think it was just a case of getting used to the tyres in the previous round and bedding them into the track. But with this the car was still good enough to finish 2nd in the round.

Round 4.
Taking the rear roll-bar off in this round made the car feel better again and with the tyres warn a bit more made the car feel a lot better and felt I could push more than I could before. I was running well throughout the heat and in a comfortable 2nd position when on the last couple of laps my front wheel came off unfortunately giving me a DNF for the round, but luckily holding on to 2nd overall for the final based on my faster time.

A Final Results.
The final was challenging to start with, the front runner leaving the pack, with 3rd place pushing me hard; I had to try driving quite defensively to keep them at bay. After a couple of passing attempts on me, they seemed to drop off, allowing me to gain a bit of space to push on. I finished a comfortable 2nd in the end, not too far behind the leader once I got some track space, and with this result gave me 1st place in the series for the 4WD class.

Series Results.
1st = Paul Robinson (DEX410)
5th = Stuart Harlow (DEX410)
9th = Scott Whyman (DEX410)
10th = Steve Haskins (DEX410)