SANWA

Alvaro his report from the EC 1/8 in Valencia. 

The European Championship 2022 1/8 On Road at the awesome Almussafes track was my first big event to race. The idea was to get experience and learn with the best drivers in Europe.

We arrived on Monday to this fantastic and technical track we know it from Spanish Championship as we raced there 2-3 times. You need a good engine and the 2-speed on point there!

Free practice was very good and we found a good setup for this tyres and the car was very good with big tyres and very very constant also. On reallocation we entered on group 8 with really fast drivers.

All the good things from free practice and reallocation changed in the first qualifying . I made a mistake in the chicane and hit the wall and I broke the right rear end of my car. One mistake in the worst moment...

Second qualifying we tried to end it as fast as possible. The car was not good and also unpredictable as we not saw an also broken right steeringblock from the first qualifying.

We checked all our Serpent 990 and in the third qualifying things went very good with a Top 9 overall.

Q4 and Q5 was not bad but sometimes the track changed a lot in different hours and we not completely understand it for our setup. And the end 15th overall and a place in the Semifinal A. To be honest, for me a very good result with our experience and better than expected!

In the Semifinal the track was different another time. Some rain delayed the race and a lot of wind appears on the final day. Our pace was not very good in the begining but in the second part of the Semifinal with smaller tyres the car was very good, constant, the pace was very good and no mistakes let me to finish in 4th position and we got finally a place in the Main Final!  Honestly, incredible for me! Really incredible and sooo happy for that!

In the Main Final our S990 was also very good. Once there we go out to enjoy and run as much as possible without errors. It was very windy and it was easy to make mistakes. In the end we enjoyed a lot! It only hurt us a little not to advance the second tire change. We lost some precious time on track but a final 5th place on this European Championship is a really incredible result for us and it is a dream for me!

Thank you to Fran and my father for the pit stops and tire changes!  And thank you to the hole Serpent Team!  It has been a pleasure to meet you all!

See you next time!

Alvaro Fernández

Team Serpent

Setup can be found here: 

https://www.serpent.com/xcart/cart.php?target=product...