Hi all,

Elliott attended the big race in Italy last week at the fantastic facility in Italy in Padova for the indoor GP.  It was a pleasure to be able to race up against some of the very fast Italian drivers and with our good friend and team mate Cody King.  We knew that this was going to be a hard race as being a permanent facility we knew that the local Italian drivers would be fast as we knew that a lot of them had done over 2,000 laps around this track.  We set up our Kyosho MP9 as we have always had good results at this track.  The car has always been very fast and suits Elliott’s driving style.  We were able to get some free practice in on the Friday evening for a couple of hours so we could get a feel for the track.

Friday was the first day which was for practice and 2 rounds of controlled practice for re seeding so we were able to get some tyres tested in which we had a full range of tyres from Pro-Line with the new X4 compound (releasing to the public next week) but with our Italian team mate, Alex, running on M4 compound we also wanted to try these as well before qualifying the following day.  We also were running the Novarossi Keep Off 7XLS which gives superb performance and a good fuel mileage around this track.  Elliott likes the feel and the power from this engine.  He also was using the 2096 pipe with a 6mm restrictor.

Saturday – Qualifying

We arrived at the track and as always the sun was shining 20 degrees and happened to be racing inside – when we are outside it usually rains!!!  Round One Elliott was able to qualify 6th in the round running X4 Suburbs.  In Round Two Elliott TQ’d the round by about 7 seconds.  He was then running X4 Hole Shot.  In Round Three unfortunately we broke a front wishbone but again was running X4 Hole Shot but was on pace for another TQ run.  Round Four due to some traffic problems he was able to get second in the round on M3 Hole Shot.  Round Five again missing out on TQ again running X4 Hole Shot but with Alex running M4 ION tires was able to TQ leaving us just behind in second place … so we were very pleased with our result even with the traffic problems around the track and some very interesting marshaling!

Sunday – Finals

We arrived at the track on Sunday morning and the weather had taken a turn for the worst and was raining but we were jumping for joy as we were indoors!  The track had been watered the night before and due to the damp conditions outside made the track very different to the Saturday qualifying.  When we arrived for our Semi-Final where Elliott was in first place we were running on X4 Hole Shot but found the track had lost a lot of grip and was not able to set the lap times that we had done on the previous day.  The track was now about a second a lap slower but was able to finish about 3rd in our Semi-Final which was good as we wanted to finish in the top 6 so we could make the Main A Final which was going to be an hour long.

Final

Elliott started in 5th position for the Main A Final which was an hour long but would be more like an endurance race.  We decided to go softer with our tyres and discussing this with Cody and his Dad we decided on an M4 Compound and would be running with M4 Hole Shot which we were confident that these tyres would go the full race distance as Alex was using M4 Ions which were like slicks.  Elliott made a good start but unfortunately had a coming together at the back of the track with another driver which left him nearly in last place but there was no panic as we had an hour to go racing.  Elliott was setting some very fast laps and was able to recover very quickly and had got himself up into second place with about a 4 second gap between him and Alex who was leading and was lapping faster.  It looked like it was going to be a really good race but unfortunately the Padova gremlin jumped on board and unfortunately Elliott lost his throttle servo at the back of the track and after several laps of struggling with the car had to retire due to the car running off the track badly and hitting the fence.  It was a shame that this happened as again I think Elliott would have had a good chance of a win but again this time, it was not to be, but we return to this track in early January for the Italian Job Race where he is determined to get the job done.

Elliott would like to thank all his sponsors for their help and support and also would like to say a big thank you to Nicola who runs this fantastic facility in Padova for his hospitality and help and a fantastic trip to the Ferrari Factory and a great fun weekend with Cody and Paul King where we had a good time in getting the cars working well together.

Looking forward to the Italian Job Race.

Kind regards

Elliott and Chris Boots