RD3 in the Netherlands with superb racing all weekend long
From the 16. – 19. September 2021 the third round of ETS Season #14 2021/22 took place in the Netherlands on the ground of the AMCA Apeldoorn. After having the first two races of the season at Arena33 in Germany, it was great for the ETS circus to travel to a different country after a long time. The weather was good for most of the time, only some fog and moisture in the morning delayed the start of practice on Thursday and Friday. Everything was set for another big show of RC racing at the Euro Touring Series.
Let`s go back to Apeldoorn to review the race results and some other interesting things we noticed during ETS RD3.
Perfect job from AMCA Apeldoorn
The race was held on the amazing track of the AMCA Apeldoorn. As drivers arrived on Thursday, everything was prepared for a great weekend of racing. The club did an outstanding job during all days and the ETS wants to shout out a huge THANK YOU. It was a pleasure to work with the cub and to race on their track which for sure is one of the best for 1:10 scale racing in Europe.
The team in the cafeteria was always there to care about the racers and even simple things like checking toilets and the waste cans around the track never felt into oblivion. The pit areas featured enough space to comply with the Covid rules and the permanent control at the entry of the facility also worked out very fine. The ETS is looking forward to returning to Apeldoorn next season!
Phil Richter replaced Scotty Ernst once again
With Scotty Ernst still not able to fly over from the United States, it was once again Phil Richter from Berlin who (luckily) was able to fly to the Netherlands on Friday evening. He announced the qualifying and the finals on Saturday and Sunday and he did another great job after making his ETS debut on the “mike” some weeks ago during RD2 in Andernach.
Phil felt “directly on point” this time with his experiences from RD2 giving him a lot of confidence and the whole ETS crew and all drivers are thankful that he could realize this spontaneous trip to Apeldoorn to help us out. Together with timekeeper Hartmut Wenzel and Referee Franz Heinsbroek the event ran smooth and on schedule most of the time! The rest of the media team with Hanno van den Boogard (Video), Oliver Storm (IT Admin), Tom Wald (Pictures) and Patrick Beck (Text) was doing business as usual to keep the rest of the world informed about the ETS racing action in all classes!
Pullstart.TV in Apeldoorn
In cooperation with PullstartTV, the ETS brought the (normally fixated) camera system from Arena33 to Apeldoorn where Oliver Storm installed it on Thursday. This ensured a nice live streaming during the entire weekend and a lot of people watched the races from home. We would like to thank PullstartTV for this opportunity and as we heard, the AMCA Apeldoorn is now thinking about installing a permanent system as well which would be amazing for the club and for the great PullstartTV platform as well!
Pictures, pictures, pictures…
At ETS RD3 in Apeldoorn we had our actual photographer Tom Wald from “Bildwald” all around the track again. He took care about the pictures and the image gallery during the weekend and produced some awesome shots at his third ever RC Car race! Beside Tom, we saw a very famous photographer trackside – Callo Albanese! Callo is a Formula 1 photographer and travels to most of the races all around the world with the F1 circus. He came to Apeldoorn with his friends from Monaco RC and provided some amazing pictures during the weekend as well. Chris Sandner from RC-Cars-Pics was also taking a lot of great shots which he uploaded onto his facebook page after the weekend. It is amazing to have so many pictures from our events and we like to thank everybody for the work, the time and the passion they put into those!
Driver and Team performances
As we did after RD1 and RD2, we want to look onto the different racing classes as well as on drivers and team performances from RD3 in Apeldoorn. We saw a lot of interesting results, a successful car debut and two new ETS race winners in the Netherlands.
Xray with important win in the Matrix Modified class
ETS RD3 saw the return of Xray`s Bruno Coelho and Alexander Hagberg to the track after they were not able to travel (Covid restrictions) to Germany for the first two races of Season #14. With both drivers back on board, Team Xray was at full force in Apeldoorn, and they had a very important mission – winning the race! With their new announced X4 touring car platform coming onto the market in the next weeks, a lot of attention was on the team, and especially their performance on track.
All we can report about the official X4 race debut is: The car looked super-fast on track! Bruno Coelho scored maximum points in qualifying and secured himself the very important TQ position. Alexander Hagberg was on the way (and the pace) to start from second place until a mistake in Q4 let him drop down to fourth on the grid for the triple A-Mains with Mugen`s Völker and Yokomo`s Prümper starting between the top Xray duo. With Antoine Brunet (7th), another Xray top gun made the A-Main showing the huge potential of their all new X4 touring car. Bruno Coelho was able to win the first two A-Mains to make it a perfect race for himself and his team. He was able to open a small gap to Völker in the opening laps of A1 and A2 which he was able to maintain until the end of each run. With Völker`s winning streak of 4 consecutive ETS race wins now broken, it will be interesting to see what Coelho and his team can do to challenge Völker for the title until the end of the season. But most important for Xray was to show, that their new X4 platform is directly on pace!
Xray`s ProStock drivers Alexandre Duchet, Jan Ratheisky and Lukas Ellerbrock also used the new X4 car and while Duchet was not happy with his own driving this weekend, Lukas Ellerbrock was able to make his first ever ETS Podium while finishing third overall. Duchet seemed to have a pretty good pace over five minutes and would have been able to fight for the win, but some small mistakes here and there denied the French championship leader a better result. Jan Ratheisky also didn`t get into his perfect, and well-known rhythm in Apeldoorn but told us that his car was feeling really strong on track with the little experience they had so far. The new Xray X4 will be available to the public very soon and we are excited to see it perform on other tracks too!
Völker and the Mugen Seiki team still a hot shot
Matrix Modified championship leader Ronald Völker scored a strong second place with his MTC2 touring car behind race winner Bruno Coelho. Völker`s car looked strong out there – same as his driving- and he was only losing some ground to Coelho in the opening laps of the heats. Together with his team, Völker tried to improve his pace for the first laps but in the end, it was not enough to create enough pressure to Coelho this weekend. Nevertheless, it was another very strong performance from Völker and Mugen Seiki with his teammate Eric Dankel making the A-Main for a third consecutive time in a row now – Eric is in a great form with the MTC2! Mugen Seiki car Designer Robert Pietsch missed the A-Main by a very small margin this time and was not able to bump up from the B-Main.
In the Xray ProStock class it was Tim Benson who was responsible for a strong Mugen Seiki outing. He was the only MTC2 in the A-Main but being the overall TQ at the end of qualifying was a huge success for Benson and the Mugen car. It was the first ever Mugen Seiki pole in the very competitive ProStock class. After showing great and very dramatic racing with Simon Lauter, Benson had to walk away with second overall, but he showed that the car is super competitive in the ProStock class too.
It seems that the number of Mugen cars is further growing in the pits and the popularity of the car seems to continue. With two cars in the Orca 17.5 Stock A-Main (Maximilian Unterschütz & Max Körner) and another two in the ToniSport 40+ Masters class A-main (Manuel Stankowitz & Thomas Oehler) the overall results for Mugen Seiki at the ETS are improving as well. Let`s see what the team around their leading ace Ronald Völker will show us on carpet!
Awesomatix Simon Lauter takes epic ProStock win
Simon Lauter was the man of the weekend in Apeldoorn. He scored a very important victory for himself, and for his Awesomatix team in the ProStock class after coming short to Xray`s Duchet and Ratheisky in the last 5 ETS races. Dominic Vogl was the last Awesomatix race winner in the Xray ProStock class in July 2019 at the season final in the Hudy Arena making it a very long time for the Russian brand to finally win again!
Simon Lauter started second on the grid with Max Mächler, Frederik Mikkelsen, Alex Kunkler and Martin Hofer also qualifying for the big show. Awesomatix looks like the most popular brand in the stock classes and Simon Lauter showed that the car is still able to beat every other contender on the track. Lauter had to settle for second in A1 behind Benson, but in A2 and A3 the show was going on and Lauter made a beautiful pass in the last lap of A2 to take the overall decision into the last final where he showed another amazing run to seal a well deserved (and marginal) win ahead of Tim Benson and Lukas Ellerbrock. With Elibert Sievers (ToniSport 40+ Masters) and Dominik Reile (Orca 17.5 Stock), Awesomatix took two more important victories away from the Netherlands while having the most cars in the A-Mains of these classes at the same time!
In the Matrix Modified class we once again saw Marc Rheinard leading the group of Awesomatix drivers including Michele Manzo, Tim Wahl, Dominic Vogl, Marcel Geiger and others. Rheinard had a great pace in practice and just came a little short here and there in qualifying lining up fifth on the grid – a position where you normally don`t win the race. The finals were another rollercoaster ride for Rheinard as he had a third place in A1 followed by a ninth in A2 and another third in A3 which resulted in a fourth overall position for the Awesomatix driver at ETS RD3 in Apeldoorn. Especially in the second A-Main he suffered from a curious referee call after a confusing situation with Hagberg and Krapp on the track where it was not possible to only blame one driver. The situation costed him a lot of positions and maybe a better overall finish as well. The referee, Franz Heinsbroek, apologized to Rheinard after the run when he also had reviewed the situation on video – but during the race he made his decision which was not ideal for Rheinard`s result! Sometimes it is like that and the “racing luck” will come back to Marc Rheinard for sure!
Yokomo`s Prümper with another podium
Yannic Prümper finished third on the podium in Apeldoorn – the result he booked at RD2 some weeks ago as well. Yannic started from the third position after a solid qualifying and it seems that he is feeling really comfortable after his return to Yokomo with his pace improving from race to race. Christopher Krapp, a permanent guest in the modified A-Main, finished fifth overall and showed once again that he is a driver Yokomo can always rely on. French Yokomo driver Loic Jasmin could take advantage of his B-Main pole position, and after a very strong run ahead of Awesomatix driver Tim Wahl he bumped up from the B- into the A-Main. Great result for Loic as his last A-Main appearance at the ETS was in July 2019 where he finished fifth overall at the Hudy Arena.
Yokomo`s ProStock driver Enrico Jung, who qualified for the A-Main two times in a row at Arena 33, had to deal with a B-main finish this time with a 12th overall behind B-Main winner Nicolai Lindegaard. Jung just missed a little bit of pace in qualifying, but he will try to come back strong for Yokomo in the next races. David Kuschnarew, who finished second at RD2 in Germany, walked away from the Netherlands with a fourth overall position in the Orca 17.5 Stock class.
The Yokomo team looks very balanced, and the only thing they are missing since Ronald Völker`s departure is a big win.
Frontwheel Championship fight
The still booming Hobbywing Frontwheel drive class saw some close racing between Steven Olsen and Stefan Schulz during the first two rounds of the season at Arena33 in Germany. It was exciting to see, that these two guys were the fastest in Apeldoorn again. Schulz and Olsen had a close fight for pole position in qualifying with the better end for Schulz who gained some speed in Q3 and Q4. Mischa Kroos from Switzerland was able to win Q2 while Olsen took Q1. The finals saw Danish driver Steven Olsen fighting like a lion to set Schulz under some serious pressure. But the reigning German FWD champion Schulz had his nerves under control and brought home the win which also results in leading the overall championship right now. We can expect a fight between these two very strong drivers until the end of the season to find out who will be the champion in the Hobbywing Frontwheel drive class.
Miedema dominated the Formula class
While Max Verstappen took the win at Zandvoort a week ahead of the dutch ETS, his fellow-countryman Jitse Miedema did the same at his home race with showing strong driving against the best Formula drivers on the planet. Jitse was able to secure pole position ahead of the championship leaders Ratheisky and Ehrbar and he had everything under control in the mains with his Infinity Formula car. He was very delighted after winning his home grand prix in Apeldoorn! But as he was not in attendance at the first two races of the season, we expect the fight for the title to be continued between Jan Ratheisky and David Ehrbar.
Girl power in the A-Main
At ETS Rd3 in the Netherlands we had some fast girls on the grid again. Jasmin Donath and Elena Fuchs started in the Orca 17.5 Stock class and Susanne Reile took once again part in the Hobbywing Frontwheel division. Patricia Wessels raced in the strong Xray ProStock class. Susanne qualified for the C-Main and finished 26th overall from 32 drivers in FWD. Patricia Wessels ended up in 36th place in ProStock and Jasmin Donath claimed the 15th position in Orca 17.5 Stock.
The girl with the best performance of the weekend was Elena Fuchs – no doubt about that. Elena showed a superb pace in qualifying and was able to book the first A-Main in her young ETS career. She was the happiest girl in the world after qualifying and everybody congratulated her for this strong achievement. In the A-Mains she raced with the best of the Orca 17.5 Stock class and finished 8th overall – congratulations for your first A-Main Elena!
New race winners at the ETS
The ETS family crowned two new race winners in Apeldoorn. For every racer, no matter what class he is running, a win at the ETS is something very special as it is still the largest stage for 1:10 scale electric onroad racing. So many drivers try to win a race, they put lots of effort, practice and time in it and it just will not happen because it is more than difficult. But at ETS RD3 in Apeldoorn we crowned two race winners who were able to climb on the top step of the podium for the first time in their ETS career.
Dominik Reile finally walked away from an ETS weekend with a win in the Orca 17.5 Stock class. He had been on a strong pace all season but in Apeldoorn he nailed the perfect weekend with a TQ and win for the first time -congratulations Dominik you are now in the club of ETS race winners! Daniel Pöhlmann finished second and championship leader Thomas Bemmerl third.
Elibert Sievers did the same as the local hero won his home race in the ToniSport 40+ Masters class after showing a dominant performance. He started from pole position and had to deal with some trouble in A1 only, where he only finished in ninth place. But the value of his result is even stronger to judge, as Elibert was able to recover in A2 and A3 with two easy looking wins. Toni Mateo from Gran Canaria finished second and Manuel Stankowitz third. Congratulations Elibert, you also joined the club of ETS race winners – a moment every passionate RC racer will never forget!
ETS season #14 2021/22 to be continued on carpet
With three great outdoor races in the books now, the ETS season will continue on carpet. Right now the ETS team is working behind the scenes to book locations and dates and as soon as everything is fixed we will announce the next race. We all hope that the situation with Covid-19 will stay relatively relaxed to allow us to race indoors with all of you guys. We will do everything possible to provide you the best events with maximum joy and RC racing action!
We hope you liked this small recap of our beautiful weekend in Apeldoorn, from ETS RD3 Season #14 2021/22 – see you very soon!
