This was the first race of the season for the new Sweden LSOR Cup. The race was held in Halmstad on their beautiful astro track where I had been practicing once before so I had quite good control over the setup when I arrived on Friday. New this year was splitting up 4wd buggy and Shourtcourse in two distinct classes, before we have competed in one class. This brings some new dynamics into the racing as it's even closer out on the track even if that usually gets sorted anyway in different heats. 

I brought new Schumacher tires that I had never tried before. This is an astro track but it still has some quite low grip, there is no worries of traction rolling and many use the MCD Astro Max to get the power down. I tried some different tires to compare with but the Schumacher was the best balance for me. I made some smaller adjustments and found a good setup I used the whole day on Saturday.

In the morning we had practice but since I had already found good setup and speed on Friday I only did a small run just to see everything was as it should.

Come qualifying I had a good race but made one misstake on the new jump on the straight which sent me offtrack where my car died and the marshall didn't notice this as he was looking at other cars. After a while he started it up and I ended up in second place for 1/8 final. 
This is where my problem started with the engine finding a good idle base when off throttle. It had a tendency to die if not using the throttle. 

In the 1/8 final I got away to a good start taking the first position on the first lap and then holding that for the rest of the race.

In the quarter final I started first and never looked back. I got the engine better tuned for a more stable idle. In the end I lost some steering and when coming back to the pits I saw I had lost the screw for the C-Hub in the front. This is a common problem but this was the first time I had experience it. I put lactate on and added a spring washer for extra hold.

The semifinal was almost a copy from the quarter final. I finished lapping the whole field and put a best new time in total. 
But I felt the engine fading a little bit in the end. I looked at the air bundle on the carb and it had little fuel in there. New for this year was a 25 minute A-final instead of 20 minutes. I think I had the engine way too lean on the high needle. So I opened it up a little bit and listened to it, sounded all good.

Before the final I made a wrong judgement as I opened up the needle even a little bit more, this is where I lost the race! Even before it has started.
Already on the practicing laps I felt the engine was wrongly tuned but I ignored it has I knew I didn't need the top speed, just to have good cooling and fuel coming into the engine. I should have stopped and adjusted this, you should always trust your instincts.

I got away to a fairly goo start but since the jump broke on the straight they had removed it and now it really shoed that my speed was inferior to the whole field. I had many cars in my back and I got styck in the corner after the straight. Getting stuck on the first lap is always the worst since the whole field usually passes you before the marshall can take your car. So I needed to start climbing through the field, I know over 25 minutes I will manage to do that. But somehow with the lower top speed I started to do other mistakes. I needed to reset and find my flow again. After maybe 7-8 minutes I was in the lead again and could start building a gap. I really felt how the engine did not perform well but kept going. Somewhere around the 15 minute mark the car just died. In Sweden we don't have mechanics so you have to work on your own car. I ran down with my screwdriver and tried to adjust the needle. I took a good while but I probably turned it down a quarter of a turn and now the engine really came a live. I don't think it had felt this good for the whole day. It was like a rocket but I had missed too much time. I don't know where I was in the field I just started pushing, making some small mistakes but the car was really flying. It was so fun to drive it and I put down the fastest lap (27.878s) of the whole day right here in the end. 

When I passed the finishing line it was in fourth place, same amount of laps as third place. Which I had lapped a couple of times before my engine problem. 

So there you have it, not at all what I wanted. I know I had the speed and the car to finish first if I had not made the mistake I did when tuning the engine. I hate when I know I'm the reason for the problems, because I can't blame anything else, not even bad luck. This was all on me.

But having said that the car was just phenomenal on the track, many people came by and commented on how planted and balanced it looked on the track. And once the engine was tuned correctly it was a monster in there. So I can only blame myself for this. Fortunately I had performed well in the other heats and could still collect the most points for the day which is important for the overall cup. 

I will miss the next race due to a concert I had booked a long time ago. so now I need to wait until 4 July before racing again. I think I will try to get some practice rounds in between there to prepare for the Euros this summer in Starec!