2nd Swiss National – Lostallo
Friday – Free Practice
It was my first race of the season and no practices since the last race in September 2018. I worked together with the other RX8 drivers like Luca Martinelli, Henzi Thomas and our new entry in the team Nydegger Jürg. They already had a lot of laps of testing this year and they helped me a lot in the first half of the day. Than I start trying different improvement with Traugott Schär and we find a perfect setup, the car was fast and easy to handle. The Xray Team was really fast at the end of the practices.
Saturday – Qualifying
The weather forecast wasn’t the best one, but we could run the 3 controlled practices on a dry track and the first qualifying round too. I won it and I was really happy with the feeling I had on my car. Unfortunately during the lunch break start raining and than we ran 3 round on a wet track. It was really difficult to find the right tires for this conditions. At the end I ended second behind Luca Martinelli and without the SuperPole there was 3 RX8 direct in the Main Final.
Top4:
1. Luca Martinelli – RX8
2. Mattia Pesenti – RX8
3. Ales Haydekr
4. Jürg Nydegger – RX8
Sunday – Finals
Today the rain wasn’t expected. During the practices for the finalists I saw that the car was perfect and I only prepare the tires for the final.
From the 2 semifinal also Thomas Henzi and my colleague Cannas Roberto reached the A-Main. For Cannas it was his first A-Main. So we had 5 RX8.2 on the grid! That was already a super result.
In the Main Final I start really fast, after 4 corners I was already in the lead and I dominated the first 12 minutes, than I had a crash with another driver exiting from the grass and I broke a tire. Traugott and Kevin changed the tires and I started to recover. After some minutes I was already chasing Luca Martinelli for the lead. 18 minutes to finish I decided to change the tires, unfortunately we had some trouble in the pit and I lost too much. I tried to push the car to the limit recovering on Luca, at 5minutes to the finish I was 2 seconds behind him, but my tires were gone. In the last minutes I lost 4-5 second because it was really difficult and I ended in 2nd place behind Luca.
Top3:
1. Luca Martinelli – RX8
2. Mattia Pesenti – RX8
3. Rudi Scherrer
At the price ceremony I showed a “memorial” body to remember Bühler Jakob “Köbi”. He left us in the night of Saturday 18.05.2019. The Swiss RC community loses a very helpful and always happy friend, always ready to help and motivate everyone. We’ll miss him!
Mattia
