Pro-Line European Challenge

The past weekend we headed off to the Pro-Line race in St Quentin, France, and on arrival, met up with the rest of the Brits for practice. The track was large with lots of track level changes and some technical sections to challenge us all. Both Jamie Clancy and James Harold looked good in practice and with some tweaks to their Associated RC8B3.1 buggies, got them working pretty good.

On to Saturday the weather was against us but a delay to timed practice and qualifying allowed us to change some settings for the new conditions. Qualifying went well and both James and Jamie put their cars comfortably into the semis.

On to Sunday's finals and James was up first, producing a great semi and easily bumping into the main final.  Jamie's semi was next and he had a thrilling race throughout, with Yannick Aigoin, to take the win by just under a second. After the semis were done the club ran a super pole session to set the grid where each driver had a chance to improve there starting position. James got a good solid run but Jamie crashed on his unfortunately and instead of being car two on grid behind Elliot Boots as it should have been after the semis we were now starting 13th which wasn't ideal.

Onto the main final and the boys got a good start. James was right up the sharp end and Jamie was working his way through from 13th to try and get near the front. Jamie pushed hard and got past most of the field in the first 5 mins to try and make up for a poor starting position. James unfortunately had a few motor issues and dropped back but was doing all he could to hang in there and get a result. Jamie got up into second and kept pushing but Elliot was on the fine form we have come to expect from him.

At the end of the 45 minute main Elliot was 1st, Jamie was 2nd and JP Sartel was 3rd. A great result for us and the AE car as it performed perfectly all weekend in the bumpy challenging conditions. Bad luck to James as I'm sure he would have had a high result if there wasn't technical issues for him. Big thanks to the club and CCL and Pro-Line for organising a great event.