We started to plan for the Euros almost three years ago before the pandemic. The plan was originally to go to Finland, but as they couldn’t host it Fehring was picked as a backup. We had already raced in Fehring in 2018 having great memories from the event but also had a very challenging time with many weird problems, you can watch a video form that event here. Then the pandemic hit and the event was postponed twice to finally be set for 2022. When we first started to plan before the pandemic we were 7 drivers from Sweden going down, but in the end we were only two who signed up due to different reasons and things changing after Covid.

So we thought we had put Covid behind us when we arrived at Fehring on the day before the event when we got message that our team mate Malcolm Wigren had tested positive for Covid. What a nightmare for him, planning for a year, driving down to Fehring and then having to stay at a hotel for days to recover just to go back. But this was not the end of our diminishing team as our team manager, Niklas Wahlström, also had to cancel the trip due to problems at work.

Now it was down to me and my wife to represent Sweden. She thought she would have a relaxing week reading books and going out for a run. She helped out both as team manager and mechanic during the whole week and I would never had managed without her help. Together we are Team Pixits Racing!

The first two days contained of nine free 8 minutes practice rounds. Already after first practice we noted this track was not well suited for Large Scale racing as there had been an 1/8 event a month before. The jumps required very quick acceleration and also pretty aggressive jumps not ideal for LS racing. This is is the same for all drivers of course but it showed to be very challenging for many cars with broken parts and not good conditions for close racing. Many of the top drivers were raising concerns over this but the track was left completely untouched during the whole week with 6 days of racing.

The first couple of practice rounds went fairly ok and we were up in spot 8-10 counting the three fastest consecutive laps. But even if they were descent they weren’t without problems. The caps on both the rear shocks got unscrewed and created a mess that took a while to clean up. I also managed to break the rear wing mount as I made some spectacular crashes learning the track. The following rounds I continued trying to learn the track but never found a good flow. I’m a pretty smooth driver usually but this track requires more aggressive driving and I had a hard time adjusting my driving style making many mistakes which resulted in bent hingepins, upper arms and the mount for the balls in the front. Unfortunately I had to spend too much time wrenching with the car instead of time spent of thinking about how to se it up. This was not due to a problem with the car but how I drove and the tricky and unforgiving track. I walked around in the pits and all the drivers had broken parts lying around. 

After the first day there was a reseeding and I ended up in the second group which I think was pretty good and included some good drivers.

One bigger problem was my tank starting to leak, but I got a new tank from NRP directly from the factory which I had to drill out and mount, this solved the problem and seems to hold up great. This has been an ongoing issue but now that seems to finally be taken care of for good!

Even if the Ultron has two servo savers I managed to strip the servo horns, not damaging the servos. The horns were just made of too soft aluminum. I went through and did some maintenance on the servos savers also to be sure they performed as expected. But event after this I wasn’t happy with how my steering performed, it turned out my Savöx 2922s were fading in the rising heat. I switched these to two AGF-RC 68kg servos which were rated to withstand higher temperatures and these lasted the rest of the event without fading in the heat.

The acceleration and power of the car, thanks to the RV295 Pro engine, felt great in the beginning but started to fade later into the event when the temperature went north. We made some different tests, changed piston rings, but in the end we concluded it was the clutch who was not engaging firmly enough. This made it problematic to take some of the sections on the track in a consistent and fast way. Either crashing when making attempts for double jumps or loosing time when rolling them instead. This was unfortunately a problem that would stick with me for the whole event but I managed to adapt my driving to bring as much speed as possible in the sections were it was needed but it was not ideal and I was dependent on certain racing lines and couldn’t place my car where I wanted it.

I also tested some different tires but that was a total throw away effort as they didn’t provide enough grip on the very slippery and packed track in Fehring. The tire that most drivers went with was soft MCD X-Cross. The final practice ended for me with a disconnected servo wire which I probably hadn’t reattached correctly when changing the servos, a stupid misstake. In total I only managed to really drive 5 full practices out of the 9 rounds.

After two days of free practice we had two rounds of controlled practice on Wednesday, running all ten minutes as in the qualifiers. I spent time testing different tires and making more ventilation holes in the body. Trying to optimise the air intake as well as the air outtakes in the back. People were doing extreme alterations to their bodies, cutting big pieces and even removing side pods. I only managed to get one full practice out of these two and that was still not feeling good.

On Wednesday evening it was time for the opening ceremony. I think this is a nice activity when you get the chance to be proud of representing your country and walk into your national anthem. It’s cool to see all the drivers gathered together. My wife Linda walked with me as we were the only country who only had one driver. It felt a little bit lonely to walk in there by yourself.

On Thursday the “real” event started with qualifiers, three quals on Thursday and one on Friday. The best two were counted for your totalt qualification into the finals. I managed to get a descent first qualifier with a 14:th position, exactly what I wanted to get some good results to lean back on if I was having problems later. And those problems were going to come. I changed to the larger 180mm tires in the first round instead of the smaller 160mm. My theory was that my type of driving was more suited for the bigger tires and the type of developing track. One of the top drivers, Pekko Iivonen, was also driving with bigger tires and a very different setup than the rest of the drivers. I was inspired by this and think it looked more like the way I like to have my car. The tires I tested were old and was really just to test but as I liked them I continued using them in the second qualifier. After just a couple of laps my rear outer tires was ripped apart. 

The rubber was old and dry and couldn’t stand the friction and forces applied to them. Now I didn’t have any other 180mm tires of the X-Cross with me so for the third round I put on some other tires, the GRP W90 Micro. I saw some other drivers, especially in 2wd which used these. So I took a chance to try them, even if I only had them in medium compound. I also needed to change the wing as I had crashed so many times. As I’ve been wrenching so much and also performed team manager duties I missed the exact time when my race was. I had just removed the wing when they called my race in the pits. I had no time putting on a new wing so I had to race without a wing, looking ridiculous. But that was not the biggest problem as Large Scale cars actually are not that dependent on a wing, it is fairly drivable without one. The big problems were the tires. I have never driven anything like it. They didn’t provide any steering whatsoever. It was like driving on ice. It was actually embarrassing driving knowing that you had friends and family watching from home. After this I had to take a moment by myself and collect my thoughts. I had been wrenching to late nights, driving without finding my rhythm, and now making a fool out of myself. That was not a fun experience and something to learn from for sure.

But this reminded me on what the best thing is with these events. It’s the people. Callan Gunn, travelled all the way from Australia, bought me a beer and all the sudden I relaxed and got some perspective on things. That was just what I needed and the energy came back to me to start wrenching again. Because I needed to make some changes for the last qualifier in the morning after.

On Friday morning we were running the last qualification round. With my previous results I was pretty much set for quarterfinal, I couldn’t improve much or get “downgraded”. That meant I could treat the last round more like a practice. My main worries now were heating problems. I was loosing fuel out of the fuel air line caused by the fule beeing too hot. I had a home made aluminium heat shield between the tank and the pipe. I got a new prototype heat shield from NRP in carbon but didn’t have time to put it on as it required some adjustments to fit. But I left my heat shield in place, this will turn out to probably bee the main root cause of my heating problem. The last qualification round went ok, nothing to write home about but I finished it and had new glued tires with good traction again. Still not finding the perfect flow and made some unnecessary mistakes out on the track. I’m usually very consistent and make very few misstakes so this was a new and a little bit frustrating experience. After the 10 minute heat I didn’t have enough fuel left for another 10 minutes, the quarterfinals run for 20 minutes.

I opened up the body some more to make sure to have good airflow to provide good cooling, both in and out. I also installed foam in the tank to prevent fuel from moving around too much. I started in fourth position in the quarterfinal, three cars bump to the semis. Finally we had some head up racing after 4 days of practice and qualifying. This is what I’m good at, racing and keep calm and let other make the mistakes. But since I wasn’t really happy with my flow and how the car felt before I wasn’t so confident in my racing. I did make some late minute changes in the setup to make the car more forgiving and also add more traction to the back.

I got away really good in the start, I’m usually pretty composed in the start to not get in any fights or tangle up as this is very costly. I passed the third car already on the second lap to then make some distance to me behind and even move up and close the distance to the second car. I was finally finding the flow and feeling I’ve been looking for the whole week. I felt great and confident in that I would move up if not something would happen with the car. And then it happened, after 6 laps I could feel the engine starting to sound like it was out of fuel and then I knew it was over. Somebody helped my wife getting the car from the track and it was just pumping out fuel out of the fuel air line. When we unscrewed the tank cap the fuel was just overflowing, I’ve never seen anything like it. Since you always leave your car to the tech inspection after each race I’ve never had a chance to really check the temperatures of things. Now I could clearly feel the aluminium heat shield was really hot. It’s been working the opposite way, instead of being a shield it was acting as a heating element and also mounted too close to the tank. 

I have very mixed feeling after this. I made a goal to make it to the semi finals and I know I would have done it if I could just have finished the race. My driving was finally on point and I didn’t make a single mistake during those 6 laps and I was gaining on the leaders. But what is really bugging me is that the heat problem was something I caused myself with the heat shield. I talked to others about it and they said it was fine. But now in hindsight it was clearly the wrong decision. I also wondered if the built up heat affected the clutch and created a down ward spiral of ever increasing heat. This single decision to have that heat shield there and not having time to install the new carbon heat shield ended my Euros right there and also probably created a lot of other problems related to that. This is my main learnings from this event. None of the other Ultron drivers had this problem so it’s not a design fault that some people make it out to be, this was my own fault.

As I’m writing this I’ve gotten some perspectives of the event. For some racers this is about competing and winning the main final of course, to become the European Champion. I had set up a goal to compete in the semis, and on driving skills I would probably been able to make that goal and it would have been fun to race all the best drivers but it was not meant to be this time.

But instead I met so many people I’ve only met before on the internet or four years ago, I also met completely new people. Making new connections and interesting conversations about RC, life and everything in between. 

I got to be mechanic for Heidi Shilcock together with her great dad. Being able to be part of the wonderful Shilcock story with mom and son racing, with Alfie-Jack being the best youth driver in Short Course. I got the chance to both talk Large Scale live on RC Racing TV but also be part of commenting the 4wd main final live as an expert commentator. This was really fun and also very unexpected. I had other drivers buying me beer when they saw I was down and needed encouragement. I also talked to the NRP team, got new parts, improved my car, learnt more about my car. I will be back stronger than ever in the Swedish Large Scale series. 

All these things are what makes the Euros what it is, it’s not a race it’s an experience to grow you as a driver, mechanic and human being. Never forget that!