XRAY sweeps Belgium Nats Rd.4

 

Last weekend the weather channels said the rain would fall and we thought that our cars would flow off the track. So everybody was happy that the qualifier was dry, and we had a good qualifier. The weather was not so great but it kept dry, that was the most important thing! It was clear that the race in Modified would held between the favorites Ollivier Bultinck and Thomas Stockman for first place. It was great to see, with top speeds on the straight over 110 kph! It was amazing how they kept their cars driving in trains on this track.

Thomas took the first final over Ollivier, in the second final Ollivier striped his spur gear in the warm-up lap, and with a 10-minute delay he started an amazing final. He needed to start last on the grid because of the delay, but after only ? lap he was in 5th position, after 4 minutes he was in 2nd position! It was a great and spectacular race even though Thomas was driving a clean race… he couldn’t push but he could not have any delays, because Ollie was moving up and fast! Ollie did not manage to get close to Thomas, so Thomas won the second final as well to take the overall win.

In 10.5T it was only the third day that Wesley Belaey was driving his XRAY on an asphalt track. His biggest competitor from the last races was Maxim Naegels (who was not driving this weekend) but that did not mean there was no competition. It was close racing in the Blinky Mode class, with the times they were clocking being even better than last year. Wesley was not always the fastest on the track but he was very consistent, and he had the advantage of incredible concentration. Wesley had the support of one of Belgium’s most popular and most successful driver of these times, Motonica team driver Robin Dhondt – a world’s A-main finalist in 1/8 on-road.

In Stock class the start of the first final was a disaster. The start was given only 2m before a 180° hairpin turn, with 5m after that another 180° turn! The first start went “crash, bang, boom”! The first two drivers where fast enough to escape, but the other drivers needed a half lap to get clean. For me it was starting after a hit in 10th place, but after getting back on the track I started to move up and ended up in 5th. Michel Mahieu won the first final with his upgraded T3’2011. The second final was almost the same as the first one, and I did not have such a good start again and needed to move up through the pack. In the 4th minute I was up to 3rd position , but in one of the last laps a driver that came back onto the track after a crash ran over from one side to the other and hit me!

The driver behind me took advantage of that, but I came back up to about 2m behind him when we finished. Michel Mahieu won this final as well, followed by a very good driving Pascal Santy in 2nd, and Natan Cortvriendt in 3rd. At the start of the third final I learned not to attack the first corner, and so I ran on the outside about 2m from the corner. This was a very good way to start! Lead driver Michel Mahieu had a clean start, the 2nd place driver was hit in the first corner, and so everybody had trouble getting through that corner. I took the outside, and went into the second turn in 3rd position. After 3 minutes, I took over 2nd place and started hunting down Michel Mahieu. Every time I came close to him, we needed to get past drivers and we split, he had a cleaner way around than I did. So I ended up 4th overall… not the greatest for me but a nice lineup for XRAY who took top podium places in each class!

 

 
Final results:

Modified
1. Thomas Stockman T3’2012
2. Ollivier Bultinck
3. Rico Claeys T3’2012
4. Nick Joossens
5. Nick Logie T3’2012
6. Nicolas Delise
7. Patrick Jongenelis
8. Jonathan Provosq
9. Frank Parmentier T3’2010
10. Werner Broeckx T3’2012

Superstock (10.5T Blinky Mode)
1. Wesley Belaey T3’2012
2. Ollivier Riffon T3’2012
3. Stefan Rommens
4. Kristof deWitte T3’2012
5. Domique Morsa
6. Stefan Roufosse T3’2012
7. Christoph Cockuyt T3’2012
8. Krist Bultinck
9. Danny Nagels
10. Gregory Werniers

Stock 17.5T
1. Michel Mahieu T3’2011 updated to 2012
2. Pascal Santy
3. Natan Cortvriendt
4. Lorenzo Vandepoele T3’2012
5. Ronny Claeys
6. Stephan Delise
7. Athan deWitte
8. Maxim Leplae
9. Benjamin Morsa
10. Logan Cockuyt T3’2010

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