Track Focus – Hudy Racing Arena
Name – Hudy Racing Arena
Country – Slovakia
Location – Trencin (120km NE from capital city of Bratislava)
Host – Hudy/Xray
Surface – Asphalt
Direction – Anti-clockwise
No. of ETS Races hosted – 4
Previous Winners –Bruno Coelho (2016 & 2015), Marc Rheinard (2014), Ronald Volker (2013)
The Hudy Racing Arena hosts the Euro Touring Series for a fifth time in 2017 but unlike the previous four visits this time it is not the season finale but instead round 5 of 6. First opening its doors to international racing when it welcomed the ETS in 2013, the facility which is also home to the Xray/Hudy factory has been a bucket-list topper for racers around the world ever since. With the ETS utilising the outdoor track, the EOS visiting earlier in the year & making use of the indoor track, there have been some tweaks to the 320 metre long asphalt circuit since the last visit. In the centre section of the track all of the original curbing has been taken out and replaced with new lower profile curbing with World Champion Ronald Volker declaring it as ‘much better’. Martin Hudy said while it was a lot of work to take out the old curbs, the new curbing has made the track ‘more fun’ to drive with it now possible to run on the curbing without the car flipping. The track works have also seen the addition of new concrete barriers at locations where the racing lanes run parallel, this improvement sure to prevent some of the spectacular crashes witnessed in the past when cars crashed into the path of oncoming cars, in particular on the main straight.
While not effecting the track in terms of the driving experience, another more visual change this year is the almost complete indoor dirt offroad track that is being added to the 25,000 square feet facility which in a previous life was a soccer stadium. Where previously a green area lay between the Arena and the factory, there is now an impressive new building. A steel frame when the ETS was last here it is now a fully inclosed building with just some final roof work needed to complete the exterior before they can get on with building the two (1:8 and 1:10 dirt) tracks inside. Its addition certainly adding to the status of the Hudy Arena being the worlds greatest RC facility.
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