Aug 20th 2011 – Rotax DD2 Challenge , Northern Regions round 5, Vereeniging, South Africa – Fabienne Lanz has been very busy over the past few months as she has fine tuned the set up of her CRG chassis for the DD2 class
which has paid dividends by moving her up the field to a more competitive position. “We put it on pole position in the qualifying heat, so we are getting the kart up to pace, we still need to work on consistency. You don’t need to be the fastest to win a race, but consistently fast times and good race craft will get you your win”, commented a jubilant Fabienne
The first of the Final heats of 20 laps went well and Fabienne maintained her position leading the field for most of the race, she finally ended up with a third place podium finish.
Fabienne leads in Pole position at the race start into turn one.
It was a very tough race for Fabienne from a physical perspective, using up a lot of energy in the fight with the front runners. The male drivers in this category are quite a bit bigger than Fabienne, and much stronger, they are have the upper body strength to handle the kart much easier, Fabiennes kart weighs more than twice her own weight. The minimum weight for the DD2 class is 173 kg, so being super lightweight is not an advantage to Fabienne in this case, but her strong will and determination and a great team that is behind her to help her get to the top. Fabienne trains hard and has maintained a strong physical training regime to compensate for this and is undeterred by this minor disadvantage.
Fabienne started in 6th position for Final 2, 20 lap race, she made up a position on the start and moved to 5th position. She lost a bit of ground and got used to some set up changes for the last heat of the day. Six laps in, Fabienne started to catch position number 4, Luca Canderle, she had quite a tug of war with him as he had a different ratio in and more top speed, Fabienne more bottom end, and so she was faster out the corner enabling her to dive inside in the last corner of the track to take 4th position.
Fabienne caught up with position number 3 driver, Eugen Britz, overtook him and set after positions 1 and 2 who were already having their own lead battle. She was just 2 laps short of them and settled for a well deserved 3rd place.
Fabienne with her 3rd position trophy
“Im so happy to finish in third place i must say a big thanks to CRG for their hard work and great support. Our progress and pace is going good and we must keep it up for the next race event”. commented an ecstatic Fabienne