Merlin Fuel news

The Nordic European Chamipoships took place last weekend at Gotherborg track (Sweden).

Alexander Hagberg took the final victory and he has sent us a report about the race.

Merlin Fuel dominates Nordic Championships

The Nordic European Championships were held at the beautiful Väst-8 facility in Gothenburg, Sweden. I arrived at the track on Wednesday before the race to run in new engines and fine tune my starting setup.
The car felt good from the start and I went faster as traction gradually increased.

In qualifying I could win all 4 rounds easily with an overall TQ time of 4 seconds in front of Mugen driver Mikael Fransson. My TQ run was the quickest ever on this track and I also set a new lap record of 14.95. Norwegian XRAY driver Adrian Berntsen showed a good pace and could qualify as 3rd overall. Martin Christensen from Denmark ran a prototype Shepherd car, but had various technical problems and could only manage 4th spot.

For the final the weather was very unpredictable and the first 20 minutes was run on a wet track. However after consultation with my mechanic we decided in the last minute which wet tire to use and the choice proved to be the right one since I had a lot more traction than the competition. The difference was so big, that by the 10 minute mark I had built up a 5 lap lead. By the 4th pit stop the track had dried almost completely so we decided to switch to foam tires. Even though the tire change made me loose almost 3 laps I still had a comfortable lead to 2nd placed Magnus Vässmar. The positions stayed like this all the way to the finish line after a trouble free race also on the dry track.

Overall I had a very fast engine with low fuel consumption thanks to Merlin Fuel!

All in all it was another great win for me with Merlin Fuel and I am now looking forward to the EFRA GP which is held at this track in July. I want to thank my mechanic Niclas Nilsson, Edwin Suneson, Klas Runesson among others for all the help.

Final results

1 Alexander Hagberg – 149 laps – Merlin Fuel
2 Magnus Vässmar – 146 laps
3 Adrian Berntsen – 142 laps
4 Bengt Andersson – 139 laps – Merlin Fuel
5 Tom Erik Haaversen – 139 laps
6 Frank Andersen – 139 laps – Merlin Fuel
7 Mikael Fransson – 125 laps
8 Mickael Brandt – 117 laps
9 Per-Ola Hård – 114 laps – Merlin Fuel
10 Martin Christensen – 34 laps”

Thanks to Alexander for his nice report and congratulations for the victory.

Tags: 1:!0, Sweden, Touring

09 Jun 09 | English | Comment (1)

Swedish 1:10 Championship Rd.2

Last weekend the Årsunda Track held the 2nd round of 1:10 Swedish Nats.

Our Team Driver, Per-Ola hard, took the final vitory, TQ’ed and set a new laptime record in the track.

He has sent us a report about the Race:

“Swedish National Series R:2
In the weekend of 23-24:th of May the second round of the Swedish national series was held in the middle of Sweden in a village called Årsunda.

The track is very technical and nowadays a bit bumpy so demanding for both the car and the setup, so some of the drivers started to practice allready on the Friday to get to know the track. Myself and some other drivers arrived Saturday morning to a wet track after some light rain the evening before, traction was very low so it was decided together with the drivers to add a little bit of sugar water during controlled practice to get the track in decent shape.

Saturday saw four rounds of qualifying first three dry ones in good weather and the last fourth one unfortunately rained out with some light rain in the afternoon. Qualifying went very well for me as my Serpent 720 with a RB T9 engine worked perfect, I could put a new lapreckord and take TQ with a 7 sec margin to second placed Edwin Sunesson running a Xray/Sirio, 3:rd was Markus Hellquist with his Kyosho/Orion car. TQ in the 1:8 class was taken my Magnus Bengtsson running a Mugen.

Sunday was final day and the weather was pretty good around lunch time, I got a clean start and starting working up a good lead to the others, at the end of the final I could drive a little slower to save the tires for the end but doing this I lost some concentration and made some driving errors so I decided to push some more again to get the focus back. After 45 minutes of racing I could score my first win of the season, it felt nice! I won two laps ahead of young Markus Hellquist and 3:rd position a few laps behind went to my good friend Thomas Livbom, all three of us live in Vaxjo in southern Sweden racing for the same club so that was very fun too!
In the 1:8 class Stefan Andersson won the final with his Serpent 966 car, well done Stefan!

I would like to thank the local club in Årsunda for hosting a nice race.
My next race will be the 3:rd round of the series in Gothenburg Sweden the first week of June, this race will also be the Nordic Championsships attracting fast drivers from both Sweden, Denmark, Norway and perhaps Finland.

Thanks to my sponsors for their great support:
Serpent Motorsport, RB Products, Merlin Fuel & GQ Products.

Happy Racing,
Per-Ola “Peo” Hard
Team Serpent”

Thanks to Peo for the report and congratulations for the victory!

Tags: 1:10, On Road, Racing, Sweden

29 May 09 | English | Comments (2)

Alexander Harberg reports from Swedish 1:10 Rd.1

Alexander Hargberg has recently joined Merlin Fuel Team.
Alexander is a well known dirver in EP Racing, 1:10 and 1:12^thscales.

This year he will be racing nitro for first time, in preparation for the 2010 EC in Gothenburg. He has sent us this report about his first ever Nitro powered race.

“The first round of the Swedish Cup with 1:10 and 1:8 GP cars was held in Växjö, southern Sweden on a flowing yet fast asphalt course. In attendance were myself, current Swedish champion Magnus Vässmar, former Swedish champions and Euros finalists Mikael Fransson and Per-Ola Hård among others.

This was my first race ever with GP cars, and after only 2 days of practice back home I felt confident that I could do well at this race.

The qualifiers went reasonably well for me as I in the 3rd round out of 4 could secure overall TQ with a 2 second gap down to 2nd placed Kyosho driver Magnus Vässmar. I also set a new lap record of 15.14 in this heat. Since I had not received my new Max Power engines in time for the race I ran one of my old LRP .12 engines which still gave good power for this medium sized track. The Merlin Fuel proved to be extremely powerful and helped me achieving great acceleration and top speed. The runtime was also an advantage since I could do one pitstop less than the other drivers in the 45 minute main!

I lead the 20 first minutes of the final before I had an engine stall which gave away the lead to 2nd placed Vässmar. With 2 minutes to go Vässmar lost his 2nd gear in the transmission and was running slowly around the track. I took back the lead and finished 1st overall with about half a lap down to second placed Vässmar and another lap in front of 3rd placed Mugen driver Mikael Fransson.

The race was a great experience and I am already looking forward to racing nitro again! I want to thank Merlin Fuel for their support which helped me win this important race!”

I forgot to add the list of top 10 results:

1. Alexander Hagberg – 170 laps – XRAY NT1 - Merlin Fuel
2. Magnus Vässmar – 169 laps – Kyosho
3. Mikael Fransson – 169 laps – Mugen
4. Per-Ola Hård – 167 laps – Serpent – Merlin Fuel
5. Alexander Andersson – 166 laps – Kyosho
6. Markus Hellquist – 165 laps – Kyosho
7. Ola Westholm – 163 laps – Kyosho
8. Edwin Suneson – 163 laps – XRAY NT1
9. Bengt Andersson – 162 laps – XRAY NT1 – Merlin Fuel
10. Johnny Karlsen – 156 laps – Kyosho

Tags: Racing, Sweden, Touring

12 May 09 | English | Comments (3)