This past weekend we had the opportunity to participate in the X30 IAME Warrior Finals 2024 World Championship. This championship was originally going to be held in Chiva (Valencia), but due to the damage caused by the DANA, it was decided to postpone it and move it to Zuera (Zaragoza).
We have run this race with Alberto Hurtado, the fastest rider of the team. We know his potential and we thought we could have a good chance in this race.
During practice we went quite well, feeling comfortable with the ruda (Komet) straight away, as it was the first time we had used it. We found it was a difficult tyre to warm up but when it warmed up it offered grip for quite a few laps, extending its performance a lot, which was bad for qualifying (our weakest point) and good for the race (our strongest point).
We managed to work well on the chassis, going very fast in practice and treating the tyres very well, unlike many of the competitors, who immediately broke the left front.
We finished the private tests being one of the fastest with both new and used tyres.
Qualifying day arrived, with everything prepared and ready to be at the top. We knew that our time alone on the track (without any wheels) would be around 1:03.3 or 1:03.4 from what we could see in the qualifying drills we did. However, we had a very difficult weekend. We didn't manage the gap correctly in the 6-minute qualifying and couldn't set a clean full lap.
In the end, we set a time of 1:03.8, which put us 13th in our group. Looking at the qualifying results, we saw that all those who decided to go it alone qualified ahead of us even though they had less pace than us. To put this into context, the guy who did P2 set a 1:03.4, which was a time we could easily do.
This ‘bad’ classification meant that we had to row from the start, as we started all the Qualifying Heats outside the Top 10 with all that entails in terms of risk.
On Wednesday we started the Qualifying Heats, our strong point. In the first two we managed to finish P13 and P7, but with the problem of having to survive in the middle of the group, we finished both with a pontoon, so with the penalty of +5s we ended up going to P19 and P17 respectively.
Both in that second Qualifying Heat, where we finished P7, and in the next one where we crossed the finish line in P6 (now without the penalty), we took the fastest lap, which showed how fast we were and how frustrating it was that because of that mistake in qualifying we couldn't be fighting for victories in the Qualifying Heats.
And, from here on, an odyssey began that would end our weekend: a P23 after fighting all race to get into the Top10, losing 12 positions in one lap because the chassis had broken; and a DNF when we were P8 in the next race due to a broken chain, leaving us in a P75 in the overall classification.
Knowing that our goal was to get into the final, we were looking to get into the top 36, so we were willing to give everything for it, knowing that it was a difficult but achievable goal for us.
But nothing could have been further from the truth. The fog made a stellar appearance at the Circuito Internacional de Zuera, cancelling the two remaining Qualifying Heats and the Super Heat on Friday, which gave the qualification for the Final on Saturday.
As I say, we leave with a bittersweet taste, knowing that that small failure in qualifying marked our weekend; and above all that, without the fog, we could have fought perfectly well to be in the Final.
Still, a fantastic experience that I will never forget: my first World Championship race as a race engineer.
