European championship A Lostallo, Switserland.

Dear Racers,

this time we all headed to Lostallo to race for the European championship 2007.

Lostallo is known for it's big size, which is nice but on the other hand also hard on the

engines because the straight only takes allready 7 seconds to complete, add 30 degrees

and the fun can begin!

Me and my mechanics ( my Father Herman and Richard ) arrived in Lostallo on Sunday

evening because free practice would start allready on Monday.

I allready had a basic setup from the Efra gp that was held at the same track a few months 

earlier.

It was decided that the practice was going to be controlled so there were 10 groups with 15

drivers each, I was in group 10 so i could take my time to set up my pit space.

In the first session my car was allready working well, just a little nervous so for the second

session i switched from the black springs to the slightly softer yellow springs, they are still

a little harder then the white springs though.

In the second session the car was good, and in the 3rd session I could allready do a 20.2

laptime so things were looking smooth. In the following days I didn't really change the car

anymore because it was easy and fast so we concentrated on making 5 minutes with the

fuel because that was the main challenge on this huge track. After some testing we found

a good compromise and I could do 5 minutes quite easy, the downside however was that I

lost a lot of top speed with this, but because I could not find another solution I decided to

stay with that,  like I said earlier the straight takes 7 seconds to complete so I lost 0.5-

0.6 seconds there.

During qualifying i was off pace compared to what we did earlier that week, so i just wanted

to put in a decent time and then go from the semi's to the main final, because I knew that

the car was perfect and the without any doubt the Ninja's run like a tank so they were not

letting me down in the finals.

In the qualification that was on Saturday morning, which was 'the' round to set a time i used

front tyres that were a bit to hard so I also missed that round, so in the end I was in 21st

spot just 0.1 second in front of my team mate Oliver Mack who used the same setup to do

5 minutes, but we were both confident about our material and we knew it wouldn't be a problem

to go to the main final.

In the 1/4 final Oliver Mack and me could easily pass to the semi's.

Then I had to do the semi final, I changed some small settings on my car to be faster

because it would be hard to go to the final with drivers like Ielasi, Tironi, Domanin, Salemi,

Pietsch, Pirani etc.  After about 5 minutes into the race I was in 5 th place and after the

second fuelstop I was in 4th, this is also how we finished with the top 4 only being

3.8 seconds apart!! But because our semi was way faster then the other semi I also

advanced to the main final and started as nr 8. Even my 4th place time was faster then

the winner of the other semi final, talking about serious competition!!!!

So my first goal was accomplished, and I'm happy to say that this is my 4th consecutive

European championship A main appearance:)

This was the top 10 at the start of the final.

1  Michael Salven        Serpent   Mega

2   Alberto Picco           Mugen    Picco

3   Lamberto Collari      Kyosho   Novarossi

4   Stefano Solaroli       Mugen    Picco Sola tuning

5   Francesco Tironi       Kyosho   Sirio

6   Fabio Domanin        Serpent   Max Power

7   Daniele Ielasi          Kyosho   Picco IDM

8   Rick Vrielijnck          Mugen    Ninja MRT

9   Mark Green             Serpent   Mega max

10 Massimo Fantini       Serpent   Max Power

At the start of the final I got away clean and after 2 laps I was running 5th, but I planned

to refuel every 4 minutes so this meant 2 stops more then the others, only Massimo Fantini

was on the same scheme with me. After the first fuelstop Massimo and me were close together

and this stayed like that for a while, but entering the chicane he went wide so I could pass him.

Then a few stops later I could pull away a little just because I won some time in the pits every 

time ( thanks Richard ) But then just before my tyre stop I got a little sweat in my eyes and I

made a small mistake, but after the tyre stop I was again 5th because I won another 4/5 seconds

back due to a fast stop.

Near the end I had the same thing again and this time I lost about 7 seconds on Fantini, Maybe

I gained a few tenths back each lap but not enough to pass him before the end. So I finish in 6th

position, which is not to bad considering I had to stop more for fuel and that I made 2 small 

mistakes.

The winner was Collari, who was the only one without a tyre stop!!! Congratulations.

I would like to thank my Father Herman and Richard for the great pitwork!!

Also i would like to thank my sponsors. MID Mugen Seiki, Ninja, GRP Gandini, Mario Rossi,

Tornado, LRP, Sanwa, KM racing. And many thanks to the dutch team for the great support!

Rick V