Wackersdorf Open 2017

This was the first race in the Senior class for Titus-Shanghai.

Titus never practiced on a Rotax Senior before this event. Nor we had a Rotax Senior engine on hands!

On Wednesday we travelled to Wackersdorf in Germany and on Thursday we prepared the chassis to what we thought is competitive. On Thursday evening we received back our engine, an upgraded Junior engine, with a brand new Senior barrel.

On Friday Titus runned in the engine and only during the afternoon training sessions we switched over to the Senior tyres as we wanted to save some money. In the evening the engine was runned in and Titus showed stable track times that were amongst the times of the top drivers, still 0.4 seconds missing to the fastest, especially the UK driver Bret Ward and the Belgian driver Max Timermann.

On Saturday lunch time we prepared for the qualifying session and we had a chance to get the weight of the kart as in racing condition. To our suprise we missed 10 kg of weight! In the following training session we were really shocked. Titus was one second behind the fastest drivers and we could guess if this was only due to the added lead. In a hurry we completely changed the setup of the kart and only then we realised that we had from the beginning a complete wrong setup  of the chassis.

Just in the right time to the qualifying session and minutes before closing of the parc fermee we were ready with the new setup without any idea of what would happen next. Titus hit the 15th best laptime out of 45 entrees in his class. A result that was acceptable under this circumstances. In the following first race, heat #1, Titus finished on the eight position. A good result overall and be ready for the Sunday races.

In the first race on Sunday, heat #2, Titus finished on the 12th position. This meant that Titus could start in the final races and in the prefinal from position 11 out of the sixth row.

The final race was a blast! Titus had an incredible speed and started from the 9th position, inner side of the grid, and he could finish on the 5th position. Titus was involved in several difficult duels and which he decided for himselves. Overall Titus became seventh in the overall scoring of the event and best team driver of Woik Motorsport!

The event was from the beginning really very difficult  without any experience in the senior class. The result is very satisfying for us even if we do not know what is happening next.

Here the final race of the Senior class. Titus with #234 and white front spoiler.