Speedlines Belgium to host 1st round of 2002 LMS.
After a successful tryout of the Diepenbeek 8 laner the LMS O.C has come to an agreement with the Speedlines club to host the 1st round of the 2002 Le Mans Series. The final date of the Opening race is now set for the weekend of 09-10 March.
More details on the provisional program will be posted this week, for starters here are some first impressions off the track.

Speedlines Club
Clubnight is every Friday from 20:00 hrs. and as we entered at 20:15 Qualifications for the clubrace were in full progress. Like most Belgium clubs, Speedlines commits itself to give their youngsters a good slotrace education. The Kids start with fully standard Carrera's and can simply move up the ranks by mounting the same body on a Plafit chassis. Waiting for the GT race we watched the youngsters race. Although heavily locked in some real close battles it struck us how well disciplined they raced. Cars and emotions remained well under controll..chapeau for the boys (and one girl). I've seen "old horses" fare less well.

Speedlines Track(s)
The Diepenbeek's club's location is a large hall on the corner of Marktplein.
On provision that they would provide activities for the town youth, City hall provides the building which has more than enough room for the four 1/24 scale tracks currently controlled by the club.
In the back there's a entresol which has a wooden 20m 4-laner powered by battery chargers.
Alongside the left side of the main hall most off the workbenches are found and the 30m 6-lane Carrera.
Against the right wall there's a 25m Drag-strip, but unfortunately it's not yet fully operational.
The Main At-Track-tion
Centerpiece of the club is the 36m. wood 8-laner on which the LMS race will be held.
The PDS build track, is extremely smooth and even with the 13,8 volt that the power supply delivers it is a true high speed track.

The Mainstraight
You start on the mainstraight, which is not completely straight?! Right after the counter there are some mini esses that send a shiver true your spine. But even at full speed the cars stay in so you accelerate down through the tunnel into the Carrousel brake zone.

The Carousel
Most Carrousels are a matter of sticking your nose in and keeping a constant speed...not this one. The entry is wide, uphill and banked, so you can brake later than you would normally expect.
On lane 8 it's tempting to keep the pedal to the metal but the risk of your spoiler hitting the rubberlined boarding makes a slight lift the best option.
In the middle the banking becomes less and you enter a sharp kink to the right which a gradually widens on the exit. Floor it and you'll accelerate flat out.

The Bridge Esses
Coming out off the Carousel your car will become light as it picks up speed over the bridge and dives deep into the Esses. Although it does not show on the picture this is a tricky right-left-right combination. First the track veers to the right before sweeping 180° back to the left.
At the right entry speed the first kink actually helps you set-up the car for the left hander. Once it comes round open up the throttle as you want every bit of speed you can get on the exit off the last right hander. Overtaking here is for the foolhardy... or the big hearted. Anyhow it's the worst place to have a big pile up.

Backstraight hairpin
But if all goes well you'll be racing full speed ahead over the back straight to were most overtaking will take place; the backstraight hairpin. Well..it's a hairpin for lane 8 but almost flat out for lane 1. Still it can be a dangerous place as the track drops down the the mainstraight on the exit.

Set-up
Used to have at least 18 volts on the tap we were pleasantly surprised to see laptimes in the low 5's with good acceleration and brakepower. We used the new Pro Race Chassis with a Carrera BMW LMP and Panoz GTR body at the 2001 weights (220/60gr). The rest of the set-up was unchanged from our Fleischman track.

Gearing
The power supply gives plenty off amps but the max 13,8 volt means lower revs for the Bison Motor. Speedlines uses a fixed gear ratio of 16x42 with 27-26 mm tyres for their club races.
The big pignon gives the car lots of speed on the straight and the amps provide more than enough bottom end grunt for acceleration although with a slight "Turbo lag".
We ran a slightly lower gearing and stuck a "44" on the rear to counter our bigger tires (28,5), but in the race I got the impression that a "45" or even a "46" would be better. After the race this was confirmed in some quick runs with the BMW by Geert Mertens.
Running on an empty track he improved on my fastest race laptime of 5.07 with a new track record off 4.98. With no time left to change gears a set off 26,5 tires were mounted and the laptimes dropped into the low 4.9's.

Conclusion
With the Sint Niklaas location no longer available finding a suitable replacement for the Belgium round in the Series ranked high on the LMS O.C. list.
After our visit to Speedlines, we are confident that the Diepenbeek club is fits the bill perfectly and offers an added opportunity to make new friends within the race community.
The 8-laner may be simple in layout but it's banked and mixed radius curves are challenging and will bit you in the ... if you become over confident.
With laptimes already in the low 5's a higher voltage might be more spectacular but certainly not in a positive way. With the power set at 13,8 volts this track will provide good and specially... very close racing!

How to find the Speedlines club
Best way to find the club is to check the online routeplanners of
shellgeostar.com. (English/German/French) or Routenet.nl (Dutch)
For the location of the Speedlines club fill in:
street: Marktplein
Town: Diepenbeek
Postalcode: 3590
Country: Belgie