For me entering my first ever ISRA Worlds was a new experience. I had never driven cars like this before and going to Chicago to compete at the Worlds with cars built by Mike Stahl was a great starting point to get a little taste of the 'faster' cars. I've also never been to America before and this all added up to a very, very, nice vacation with making new friends and special memories.
Mike and I met last year in Toronto and ever since we're good friends. I help him tuning his model cars as much as possible when he comes to Yurrup to race them and so he built me a set of cars for each class at the ISRA Worlds. A very sweet deal I'd say.
The event would take in total seven days of racing, from Sunday to Sunday. Again new for me as I never participated in events longer then four days. I arrived the Thursday before the racing to get 2.5 days of practise, which I'd definitely need if I wanted to be up to speed and know how to extract everything out of the cars that Mike had put in them.
After a rather nervous episode of drama at the Dublin airport to get onto the flight for the USA, due to a certain form I apparently overlooked, I was good to go to hop across the pond. The flight itself was very comfy but still all in all it took about 18 hours from my doorstep in Amsterdam to the raceway in Chicago, so I was a little bit tired on Thursday night when Mike sent me out to practise with a practise car.
At first I thought it went quite alright. Mike gave me a 1/32 Eurosport car to get me dialed in with the fast stuff and I kept it reasonably well in the slot. But... once I saw that Ciccarello, Gawronski, Horky, you name them, being some half a second faster, I knew I had my work cut out for me the next days.
All Friday and Saturday I rattled up as many laps as I could, taking every second of track time I could possibly get. I slowly got the hang of it. I found that doing a fast lap was becoming more frequent, but repeating them every lap was a whole different ballgame. You get distracted very easily as you need about 5.0 seconds a lap and there are seven other cars around you all trying out their limits. Pretty difficult sometimes to get a 'clean' run.
To settle down after the racing I frequently went across the street to a very nice bar/restaurant and met Michelle, a very cute waitress. But she had some surprises installed that I had no clue about.
Four classes of racing would be held during the week, being:
1/24 Production team race, where I'd race together with last year's champion Christer Helgesson from Sweden
1/32 F1
1/32 Eurosport
1/24 Eurosport
In practise I drove them all and I liked the Production cars the most, probably cause they were handling the closest to what I know from model car racing. Christer had built two fantastic cars and we managed to qualify fourth on the grid, which gave us a very good view of being on the podium.
After the start of the race Christer and I were mostly in 3rd-4th spot, depending a little bit on which team drove in what lane, and we were getting confident that we could get to the podium given our pace and consistancy. Unfortunately, during the fourth stint I think it was, I was driving, when all of a sudden the car slowed down dramatically, to about 8.0 secs a lap. I knew I hadn't hit anything for a while so I was pretty sure it had to be something mechanical. Christer found that one of the axle bearings had seized up... and this took a while to repair. Once we were back on track again the car was still pretty slow, and Christer thinks we probably damaged the motor in the laps that I did with the seized bearing. A great shame and 1-0 for Lady BadLuck.
Congratulations to Jonathan Forsyth and Greg Gilbert for taking top honours in this race.
Next up was 1/32 F1.
In the days leading up to the event there was a lot of confusion and different interpretations of the ruleset for this class in regard to the allowed body. What I didn't know before coming to the event was that each country has one representative in the organisation, called a 'delegate'. And since I was the only one from Holland at that point, I could be at the 'delegates meeting'. Quite interesting, as I also run my own series in Europe and I was keen to see how another organisation handles it's problems.
After this was over I could finally do some laps, and my god, Mike's warnings about these cars being tricky weren't exagerated. They are powerfull, small little rockets and I had a lot of problems keeping them in the slot. In fact, I broke the first one after five minutes when I put it in the fence and snapped the motor solder joints. Good going, Nick...
To cut this long story short, I didn't get the F1s under control, qualified poorly (60th or something?) ,and in the race my gear went after a few stints. I was ready to get on with the next class.
2-0 for Lady BadLuck.
The F1 race was won by Piero Castriconi after a brialliant drive.
1/32 Eurosport, aaaaaahhhhhhh what a relief I felt when driving the 1/32 in practise. These cars I can push and I can 'feel' them when I get close to the limit. Boy, did I have fun driving them, even more when I noticed I was only about 0.2 secs off the fastest guys in the A-group. I was smiling again.
During practise I found small things I could do to help Mike, such as making sure all parts are nice and flat, clean them, make sure they move freely... while he did lots of motorwork which I have absolutely ZERO knowledge about.
My qualifying run was again not really stunning. I am not used to the track being unused for about 2 to 3 hours while Tech is being done and because of my very low ISRA ranking, I was always 5th or 6th up in the qualifying run on a very cold track. Nevertheless I was around 32nd spot after qualifying, and at least I had fun driving them.
My group was pretty smooth and I was able to set a very respectable lap total, just behind Briton's Richard Mack. But to be honest, I thought that it may be enough to make the Semis but that I would strand there. Turned out, I didn't.
It went great, I always tried to stay within a lap of whoever was in front so that I had a good reference point and at the end I found myself as 3rd or 4th qualifier for the Main Final. How cool is that?!Only at this time Mike was kind enough to show me what would be waiting for me: a picture of beautifull girl who'd be handing out the trophies after the races. And hey, anyone recognize the face from the pic at the end of the mail?
What a nice surprise for Nicky. 
Maybe that picture was the reason I fell off a couple times during the first few stints of the Finals, where those offs were totally unnecessary and of my own doing. I decided to settle for a lesser pace and see what would happen later on. I thought I'd be 6th or something but when I looked up at the leader board it still showed me as 3rd. 'What the heck has everybody been up to?' was my first thought. I tried to continue on my earlier safe mode and it got me pretty far. I was 2nd for a while and with a good view on the win as Greg Gilbert (leader) was having serious tyre problems on the slower lane red (1) when I was on yellow (6). This is where I went wrong: pushing for the win I automaticly went into modelcar-push-mode, and that was too much for these powerfull little machines. I went off twice and the second time Horky crashed into me (my fault) and our bodies got tangled. The marshal fixed it but my braids were messed up, which upset the balance of the car. I needed to pit twice to have them adjusted by Mike who again did a fantastic job helping me and coaching me. But in the end, Cicarello had caught up to me and almost even beaten Greg if it weren't for 10 or so little segments between them!
One of my top-three thrilling races I've ever participated in, what a rush.
))Congrats to Greg Gilbert and Paul Cicarello for a great Finals, what a pleasure to racing against them.
2-1 for Lady BadLuck.
1/24 Eurosport. Who could have thought... Lady Badluck wasn't done with me.
I had the same strategy as with 1/32, which was to steadily move to the front of the field, and in this class I felt even more comfortable as I had less trouble keeping up with the leaders as I did with 1/32. But... after a marshal put me back in, after an off in which I hit nothing, BOTH leadwires came off the guide at the same time... how about that? I surely never seen that before. This put paid to my 1/24 chances. We did fix it and I went back out again just so that I could finish the race and so that Mike could have a good indication on tyre-wear, but two stints later my gear went. We decided to surrender to Lady Badluck and call it a day for me.
The finals were incredible, won by Horky (1st) and Voijtik (2nd) after a brialliant strategy call not to change tyres. Both Paul's seem to have a slight edge over the Czechs in terms of speed but both had to change tyres and ran into small problems.
Congrats to Vladimir Horky and Antonin Voijtik for finishing 1st and 2nd separated by only a few segments.
After the racing there was an Awards Banquet at a local restaurant. I was looking forward to getting my trophy obviously
but apperently the trophy girls had been cancelled... damn it, I felt robbed, so the next day I went back to the bar and got my picture after all. 
Next year Brasil, who knows? It was a lot of fun and very interesting to see 'another world'.
Thanks to everyone and again Mike Stahl, it wouldn't have been half as good without you, buddy!
Nick de Wachter
