GUBBIO, ITALY
In the first weekend of September Italian season restart after the holiday break… In the beautiful location of the club Automodellismo 5 Colli was held the last round of National Championship to decide “who’s the fastest” of 2018. Our team drivers seemed in good position to bring home both titles but “racing is racing” and we never know what could happened during the weekend.
The track, that already host the 1:10 Worlds in 2016 was complete resurfaced with an amazing job of the organizers that completed the job only one week prior the event. Not a lot of entries this time probably because the date was too much close to vacations. Dario decided to attend 1:10 scale with Francesco while Carmine and Lamberto tried to secure the Championship after their 1-2 in Fiorano.
As often in 2018 main character of the race was again the bad weather: as we had super nice conditions Thursday and Friday for Saturday and Sunday the forecast carried tons of water… For this reason the timetable was modified starting qualifying on Friday afternoon to finish all the Amains before 17.00 when a big thunderstorm is expected.
In the three rounds we have a dominance of our drivers with Balestri fastest in 1:10 and Raiola fastest in 1:8; both secured the TQ winning all the rounds. Tironi wasn’t completely satisfied of the matching car/engine on his IF15 and after the podium spot at EC in Portugal again finished 3rd. Collari tried different things to challenge Raiola at his best and took the 2nd spot for the Main. In F2 category the young Antonio di Martino, already semifinalist at EuroB in Cassino succeed to place the number 9 on his car for the final.
1:10 Expert Amain started at very strange hour for our hobby: at 11.30 in the morning the drivers were called on the rostrum and few minutes later Dario “take off” at the tone with an evident supremacy… Francesco stay in his roots together with Mazzeo for a while before flipping the car entering the main straight… This accident suggested more “care” and safer pace to our driver as he need only to control his competitors for final win. Tironi dropped 7th but in 15 minutes the chase for the podium was completed. Position were stable, strategy almost the same for all when entering the straight other candidate to final title Giliberto “spun” just in front of Balestri that hit him full speed… Dario retired, Mazzeo took the win and Francesco with 2nd place is the new Italian Champion! Well done Franci!
In 1:8 F2 Antonio makes a really good first half of race driving constantly in the midfield with good pace and consistent driving… unfortunately the 2nd set of tires wasn’t good as the first one and after a big accident at the end of the straight he must retired when a final 5th place still be possible… Will be for the next year…
The 1:8 Expert Amain confirmed the good intuition of organizers as 3 minutes to end of previous F1 Main a shower wet deeply the track… Race director decided to start any weather conditions after few minutes as forecast was even worse for the rest of the day. Raiola repeat the same theme of Dario getting the lead at the tone; Collari wasn’t comfortable as his team mate but stay in second until the first pit stop; Carmine open the gap driving fast and consistent whit Salemi that recovered strongly from the back of the field. As often happened Lamberto choose the “long run” strategy to try to fight swapping leading and position for first 25 minutes when Carmine suffered couple of episodes that we could define as “bad luck”: he hits a stone and of the straight going longer close to the wall and few minutes after an umbrella used by Marshall to repair from the rain, due to the wind cross the track hitting the orange Infinity IF18… Fortunately nothing really happened aside little time lost and even with a bit of heartache for his pit crew he quickly recover the lead to win the race and the title finalizing the “perfect” weekend. Lamberto succeed to step on the podium in 3rd for another 1-2 this time on the overall ranking. IF15 and IF18 are Italian Champion… congrats to Francesco, Carmine and the whole team for the efforts and the very good result!
