ETS Trencin (Slovakia) (2014/2015)
25.06.-28.06.2014

This year, we were able to prepare our pits on Wednesday morning, so we didn't have to hurry on Thursday morning.

Thursday:
First practice rounds have started on Thursday; In “stock” we first had 2 practice rounds that lasted for an hour (9:25-10:25 and 11:50-12:50). There was a maximum of 14 drivers at once, an they switched on every 4 minutes, because this was completely open practice, with no groups.
After 13:00 practice was in predefined groups. I was driving in 11th group. Because I attended 2 previous ETS's on this track, I already had some experiences and baseline setup, so I've started with the same setup, as year before.
Grip level was great from the very beginning, but still it was improving after every round of practice. So I had to make some changes on my car, because although it was easy to drive, I was slow compared to other drivers.
We had 2 morning practice round, and then 3 round of practice in groups, I've managed to drastically improve my lap times and setup in these 5 rounds.

Friday:
We were left with last free practice on Friday, then we had so called “seeding practice” in which best 3 consecutive laps counted for seeding into qualification groups. And because I didn't drove this seeding practice perfectly, I've gotten into 9th qualification group.
But then I managed to drive 1st qualis without and major mistakes so I've ranked on great 18th place. In 2nd qualis I once again drove very similarly (3 tenths of a second faster in 5minutes) so I once again improved my overall ranking; I was on 16th place, which was excellent result for me. But there was still a lot of top drivers behind me, which crashed in 1st on 2nd qualis, so I knew that ranking after 3rd qualifications will drastically change.

Saturday:
And Indeed, on Saturday morning (after 3rd round of qualification) I fell on 23th place overall, even though I've improved my time for almost 1.5seconds. And because 4th qualis were canceled due to bad weather forecast, I didn't had any chance to further improve my result and possibly rank into “b” finals, which would be dream come true for me.
So I've started from 2nd position in “C” finals.
Because of alrleady mentioned bad weather forecast, organizers planned 2 round of finals for all categories today. But rain got us a bit of guard, so we were more than an hour behind schedule. Therefore, everyone except “A” main drivers had only 1 round of finals today.

I've started my “C” main excellent, and was holding back faster racers behind me for almost entire race. Then driver hit me on the straight, and I've lost a lot of positions. Afterall I've managed t o secure 6place in my group, which was 27th place overall, within 150 drivers in my category.

As every year so far, we had a party with tombola on Saturday evening. But unfortunately this year I didn't win any prizes, more luck next year :)

Sunday:
Sunday morning, served us with fresh puddles on the track and bad weather for breakfast. So we were waiting until 10 o'clock for any improvement. And because nothing has changed and heavy rain was predicted to start in few hours, organizers decided to cancel the race for today. So I finished on 27th place overall.

On my way home, we've stopped on the track in Wiener Neustadt, where a lot of top drivers were training and having fun after ETS, because weather there was really nice.

I know that I could finish on higher place with some luck, but after all 27th place is great for a race on such high level. This year we had 365 entries from 36countries worldwide (last year we had “only” 264 entries), so competition was really strong. I had a wonderful time, made new friendships, talked to old friends of mine, and most important, enjoyed in tight racing….mine personally, aswell as while watching top drivers on the track.

I would like to thank to Ji-Hyun Jang from MuchMore for repairing my broken tire heaters, because it would be really hard without them.

On this place, I also need to gratefully thank to all my sponsors for supporting me with batteries, parts and wonderful paint jobs for my car.