Track Focus – Hudy Racing Arena

Name – Hudy Racing Arena
Club – Private Track
Country – Slovakia
Location – Trencin (120 km North East of Bratislava)
Direction – Anti-Clockwise
Surface – Carpet tiles
Previous key events hosted – 3 X EOS rounds, 4 X ETS rounds

Round 3 of the Euro Offroad Series is making its fourth visit to the World Famous Hudy Racing Arena and having traditionally attracted one of the smaller entries of the season this year’s event has attracted the 6-year-old series’ second biggest ever entry, the snow not putting off the drivers who make up the 300 plus entries.  The home hunting ground for Xray, their impressive factory part of the 25,000 square metre facility, this year the EOS organisers took over responsibility for the build of the track in response to rivals teams feeling that, while the Arena changed the track layout for the race weekend they still had an unfair advantage. While not affecting the EOS competitors, one noticeable change at the Hudy Arena is the progress made on the dirt track with the separate building it is housed in now fully clad having been just a steel frame on the previous visit. For the future the facility might present the opportunity for the EOS to include dirt. One change for the weekend that will affect drivers is the new timetable structure with the entire event separated between 2WD and 4WD.  Previously Friday was a mixed practice day with Saturday for 2WD and 4WD taking place on Sunday.  Now drivers with start with 2WD practice and continue with qualifying through to the Finals before the switch to 4WD practice on Saturday.  The new format is already proving very positive with racers as they can focus on one car rather than switch between classes.

Built in an area 34 metre long by 28 metre deep, the track layout has been created by Gerd Strenge, a regular contributor to EOS track layouts, with input from Race Director Scotty Ernst.  A much busier layout than in the previous years, reigning 2WD Champion & last year’s race winner Lee Martin described the layout as ‘testing’ adding ‘there is a lot going on’.  The Yokomo driver said one of the challenges of the track is that the jumps are at different angles to each other and the corner dots are presenting a bit of a challenge as contact tends to flip the car. He also said getting around traffic was hard as ‘not every driver is confident with their lines’. 2WD standings leader Michal Orlowski said while the track is ‘fun to drive’ he doesn’t feel it will make for good racing.  In practice, the Pole found other drivers mistakes made it hard to complete clears laps, making cars cross lanes when they crash.

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