March 29, 2015 first round BMC @ Ostricourt, a race to forget quickly,… you can try these out.
The first race at the calendar for the BMC was in Ostricourt in France,…. A track where top speed is very important to be fast at the track. The weekend started at Friday for us with free practice, it was dry that day the speed was ok however we all knew that the race weekend would be wet,…. And so it was on Saturday almost every session was wet, under these conditions Nick was able to set times that are in the middle field, once we got dry conditions during the last stint we changed the settings and with only 3 laps to drive Nick showed the 4th best time with potential to be faster.
And so it became Sunday the race day, looking outside the window of our hotel room we saw that is was wet, really wet and even more rain and wind came the complete day,…. New with the BMC is that a race day have 3 races instead of 2 as it was in the past, ….
With the free practice Nick again showed a 6th position,…. Not where we wanted to be… Qualifying was no improvement and Nick had to start from the 3th row at the 6thposition.
Race 1.
Nick had a very good start and after the first curve he was already on the second position but than in curve 3 he was kicked from the track and had to continue his race at the last position but could come back in these difficult conditions to the 7thplace,…
Race 2.
Again Nck proofed he is a good starter and from P7 he moved forward to the second position with his Nordix Tony Kart of Daems Racing,…. He remained this position until lap 7 than he lost that position but was still in fight to claim this position back,…
We are in the final lap and in the 3th last curve, question is who will be on P 2? Nick, Ilian, Dylan,…. Nick , Ilian and also Gilles are of track,… Thom who was far away from the fighting group did something what was actually impossible he took the curve at an uncontrolled speed and used NICK Ilian and Gilles as brake and kicked them from the track,… Strange thing is that the marshals didn’t saw it and without penalty Thom could claim the 3th position,… Nick could get back on track and ended the race as 9th,…
Race 3.
If the scenario of race 2 was not worst enough,…. Nick had to sart on the 8th position ( is the average of the results of race 1 & 2), again he started good, but after the first curve, 2 karts hit each other and Nick was hit and kicked far from track,… he stacked in the mud and he needed to much time to get his kart back on track, the gap was too big for Nick to close in the race so after 3 laps he retired his race,….
We thought we had already got all bad luck of the season with the kick-of at Genk, but seams there was even more,… without the incident in the first race it would have been a complete different race weekend for Nick.
During the briefing the drivers are getting a clear message from the organization;-Who does not behave during the race will have to take the consequences, no more warnings will be given but the driver will receive immediately a penalty,… but we had a fed incidents during the minimax race without consequences, ….
Our special thanks to Daems Racing team for the great support, to Max Timmermans for the support and tips,…. Once we are in the race Nick can demonstrate a good performance but the issue is that some incidents just destroyed the results,…
Up to the next event hopefully now with more luck,….