Round 5 of the ever popular ETS series was held last weekend at the Mini Circuit “Ville de Luxembourg”. This track is really challenging with big elevation changes and its famous Laguna seca style cork screw corner coming onto the main straight its definitely a favorite with the drivers.

Free practice in heat order took place on Thursday and the team used these runs to test some ideas and find a solid base setup. The wind and cold temps meant we were really searching for more overall traction. Some things worked better than others but overall we were all running close to where we needed to be.

It was also great to see more Pro5 drivers at this meeting and it was fun to help those guys out and offer setup advise.

Qualifying was set to be really close as there were only a couple of guys up front with a little more pace than the others.

Q1 –Due to the even cooler temps on Friday evening for the first quali run I switched to our slightly softer Hpi green spring hoping to find more traction. The run was clean and the car felt pretty good but missed a little corner speed which I thought I would have on new tyres. 10^th in round.

Q2 - Used tyres for this round it started out ok but quite loose in the cork screw section and at the 2 min mark I rolled after clipping an infield curb. The car felt better towards the end but the error cost me about 2.5 sec. Could have been a 6^th in round. Frustrating to end up 12^th.

Q3 - This run I used my second set of new tyres. I really struggled to find traction on the opening laps and on the limit to make up the few tenths I needed over the run I pushed a little too hard and had a spin in the same difficult spot as round 2 coming through the cork screw section on to the main straight. This costing me too much time I choose to stop a save the tyres for the final round.

Q4 – On fresher tyres than most for the final round I hoping this was my chance for another solid top 10 run but the track conditions late on in the day really seemed to suit older tyres and despite and completely clean run it wasn’t quite enough.

Jilles had some awesome runs especially in round 2 and 4 and would line up 3^rd in the main. While myself and Freddy were disappointed to be in the B main, we were in there with 2 previous ETS round podium finishers MeenV and Akio Sobe and current WC Naoto Matsukura showing the level of completion we now have at every ETS round.

In the finals I tested a few small changes to the setup but due to the some typically rough starts it was hard to feel too much difference. Finishing up with 4^th in the first main and another 4^th after a small battle with Akio in the second main.