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2011 FEMCA Truggy Championship
We headed off on the Wednesday for the 2011 FEMCA Truggy Championships at the Sunshine Coast Off Road Club, Queensland, Australia and arrived to find a beautifully manicured track that had bits of everything in its design.
I was running the TecnoPower B01T couple with Byron Fuel ProDriver 30% and Sweep Tyres for this event that has been going strong now since March of this year when it was first run and it was time to see how it would cope running it in a Truggy.
Qualifying.
The first 2 rounds of controlled practise went well and were time to get used to driving my loaner Mugen as I hadn’t driven a Truggy in about 4 years. The track was demanding in places and there were some long fast jumps that could quite easily tear an arm off it taken incorrectly but all seemed to go well. My TecnoPower B01T needed very little adjustment from being run in a Buggy and was on song right from the start.
The first round of Qualifying was good, I managed to put in a pace which was indicative of no setup knowledge of the car and put me into 13th place overall at the end of round.
The rest of qualifying was fairly straight forward with no major issues except for the odd marshal not looking at what was going on but then again we shouldn’t crash , should we? I wasn’t totally satified with my qualifying result of 21st but I knew it would give me more track time and I did have more pace in me. All throughout, my TecnoPower engine performed faultlessly.
Finals.
On Sunday, the final day of racing, the weather gods decided that enough was enough and after 3 days of getting sunburnt most of us were now trying to stay warm and dry as the heavens opened up during the 1st quarter final. Luckily, a few of us had some idea of what was coming and were able to prepare the cars accordingly with waterproofing certain parts. The Quarter finals saw some decent names drop out of the running through water damage or the weight of the cars finally catching them out and bogging the engines down. The cars were coming off track probably around the 10-11kg mark!!! This is where the TecnoPower B01T really came into its element. With the right tune I was able to hold a steady pace throughout my quarter final and towards the end of the race I was easily able to catch and pass others without any overheating issues.
Next was the Semi, this was always going to be a tough semi but was made just that bit harder with the track conditions. I had just managed to get the car turned around in between races (cleaned and prepped) before the start of the race. I was a mediocre start to the race but again I was able to keep the car going for long enough so that it came into its own towards the end of the race again and make the bump spot.
 A-main final.
The length of the final had been cut down from 60mins to 40 mins due to more bad weather threatening to come back and all of the drivers agreed. I had a good start from 9th on the grid to avoid the carnage at the first corner to end up in 5th spot at the end of the first lap. From then on in, it was time to settle down and just try to get the car to the end of the race. The track had one line around it and going off line proved to be a nightmare as it was still quite sloppy in places and other spots would pick up heaps of weight onto the car. During the race we had to cut back pitstops to 7:30 with the added weight on the cars but managed to oush the very last stop to 8:30 and ran out as we crossed the line. After a long 40 mins I managed to get 4th spot overall and was satisfied with the result for my first outing in Truggy.
Overall my Tecnopwer B01T performed faultlessly all weekend from the moment I hit the ground with it.
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