Track Focus – DHI Cup Odense

Host Club – Odense R/C Minirace
Country – Denmark
Location – Odense
Venue – Odense Conference Centre
Track type – Temporary
Surface – Carpet (Onroad), Carpet & Wood (Offroad)
Direction – Anti-Clockwise (Onroad), Clockwise (Offroad)
Previous races hosted –15

2015 marks the 15th running of the DHI Cup and the famous Danish event, which has traditionally kicked off the new season for touring car’s top drivers, is celebrating the important milestone with a big resurgence in interest with a capacity 300 entries.  On opening up registration for the Odense based event, it was quickly booked out with the organisers having for the first time to deal the issue of having a waiting list such is the renewed interest.  This being the fourth year the event has also catered for offroad racers, the two classes running simultaneously on separate tracks either side of the large double sided driver stand, the biggest change for 2015 is the hall.  Having being held in the impressive Arena Fyn since 2008, a Handball test match between Denmark and Slovenia in preparation of the upcoming World Championships in Qatar has meant the organisers have been moved to another hall within the Odense Conference centre.

While not as grand a hall as the stadium, in terms of overall floor space the host club Odense R/C Minirace still have the same room to work within.  While regulars of the race had their doubts about being moved from the stadium, the general feeling on arrival in the new location is that more enclosed hall without grandstands actually creates a better overall atmosphere in the pits.  While the hall has a much lower roof, the lighting over the track has been enhanced thanks to the Conference centre installing 80 spot lights in addition to the existing lights just for the event.

In terms of the tracks, the offroad track having been made up of black and grey carpet last year is now grey having been made using last year’s touring car track carpet.  The touring car track features new carpet although some drivers are disappointed that the growing in popularity black ETS carpet was not used.  In terms of the layout, last year’s touring car winner Ronald Volker said while traction was still low on the new carpet making it hard to get a true feel for the layout he said ‘overall it should be good’. The Yokomo driver, who is chasing a sixth DHI Cup title this weekend, added that the layout on the right side of the track could doesnt make the best use of the space and they could have made it more technical helping to increase the lap time too, 12.5 seconds being the early pace for a lap time.

Three time back to back 4WD Buggy Champion, Joern Neumann described the offroad track layout as being an improvement on last year with the carpet change also improving traction levels.  Not a fan of the speed bumps the German, who is running without a chassis sponsor after Durango opted to discontinue its factory team at the end of 2014, said the long jump on the back straight was the tracks most challenging feature as the landing into the following 180 corner was short.  In free practice a good 4WD lap time is a late 18-seconds while 2WD is a low 19-seconds.

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