U.S.A-TEAM IN POLAND; FINAL WRAP-UP
The 2018 OSY-400 World Championship started in Ślesin, Poland on Friday June 15. The Americans arrived on Thursday with the Polish race organizers having already received and unloaded their shipping container and storing it in a secure location just a few kilometers from the race site. Their trailer was delivered to the pits on Friday afternoon and the American team of Billy Allen, Mike Akerstrom, Jimmy Cummings, Dudley Smith, Racer Allen, Bob Cronin and Team Videographer Valerie Lighthart got to work setting up their pit stall and grinding through the registration and pre-race scruteneering process.

Saturday morning time trials saw Estonia’s Rasmus Haugasmagi setting the pace as he blazed to the pole position with Cezary Strumnik from Poland gaining the second spot with Allen third. The Podium finish was a mirror image of the 2017 race with defending champion Rasmus Haugasmagi from Estonia winning three straight heats to capture another Gold Medal with Poland’s Cezary Strumnik once again gaining the silver. Strumnik seemed to be the faster of the two but the Estonian’s unmatched speed off the starting jetty was just too much for the hard charging Polish driver to overcome. Several times it seemed that Strumnik had established enough position to make the pass for the lead but the Estonian had just enough top end speed to nip the Pole at the end of the long straightaways. With a second place and two thirds, United States pilot Billy Allen, driving his brand new O’Connor hull “RUSH “pocketed his second Bronze in as many years to complete the exact same top three finishing positions of the previous race in Germany. With the two top guns leaving the rest of the pack in their wake, it was a tight battle for the third spot between Allen, Slovakia’s Miroslav Bazinski and first time World Championship contender Oliver Nilsson from Sweden, who had surprising speed for a first time entry.

The final positions following the Medalists were; Nilsson fourth, Bazinski fifth, Lithuania’s Gintaras Marcinkus sixth, Estonia’s Rene Suuk seventh, England’s Wayne Moyse eighth, America’s Akerstrom ninth, Lithuania’s Arvydas Dranseika tenth, Poland’s Grzegorz Stepniak eleventh, Sweden’s Anton Dickfors twelfth and Tomas Jirkovec from The Czech Republic rounding out the field of finalists.

The U.S. A-Team would like to thank all those who supported them on the home front as well as their shipping company Bruning International who got their equipment to the venue on time and without a hitch for the second year in a row.

Unity Flagstaff Reporting