EG-X Technologies Team Profile
8 - EG-X TECHNOLOGIES (Finland/China)
Team Principal(s):
Karl Hammaarling (), Hua Chang (
)
Slogan:
“Linked Technology”
Backstory:
The censure of the Icaras and Goteki 45 teams towards the end of the F7200 league, and the ailing Assegai’s subsequent buyout by the gleeful Piranha left three slots open for new teams to take places for the start of the F9000. As Tigron took over Qirex, and G-Tech group began to ruin AG-Systems, the AntiGravity racing league was beginning to look more and more foreign. Despite Van-Uber’s pleasant manner and adherence to racing strategy, they couldn’t quite manage to make up for the strangeness of the other two teams to come in alongside it.
In 2152, at the very first race of the inaugural F9000 race, a Chinese team turned up with a distinctive maroon and white ship. They produced no documents, and did not turn up for scrutineering. But with some team’s engine woes, the stewards allowed the strange ship onto the grid, and the first race of eG-r technologies is recorded. Paul Cheung and Alex Reece finished fourth and fifth, and this remains the second best start to a season for a new team behind Harimau (disregarding Qirex at the first ever race of the F3200 league). But as soon as the race was over, the team packed up and left without a word. Some began to doubt whether or not the red and white Chinese team had actually ever been there.
But at the next race, at Mandrashee, they were there again, and throughout the leagues even as they became a regular fixture, with slightly more known about them. eG-r Technologies was a government-owned company initially designed to work on deep-sea diving suits, but it was discovered that the neural interfaces they had been working on had other uses, such as for flying. The new F9000 with higher ship technology limits was the perfect proving ground for the Chinese, and so it was that eG-r became an accidental regular of the series.
One thing that never helped their case in becoming fan-popular was their inherent paranoia. Professor Xao Chiu, the head of eG-r would famously have a new visor screen to watch the races imported into his private bubble in Shanghai. Utilising every trick in the book, eG-r managed to hide all their details of their ship from the Race Commission until the fall of the series in 2170. When the end came, the eG-r personnel were all on their way back to China as they detonated their ships... with the pilots still inside.
On the other end of the spectrum, Xios International was a team that had come soaring up through the ranks of junior racing, even once getting a single race at Gare D’Europa in the F7200 season when Assegai needed to pull out with financial woes. Based in Vantaa, Finland, Xios had been set up by Sampsa Kovalainen, an ex-FEISAR pilot who had been dismissive of the way that the European squad continued to move about the continent, believing if it was kept to one country, better results were soon to follow.
Believing Finland, the most successful motor and AG-sport country in the world to be the one that FEISAR should belong to, Sampsa bought the aerodynamics factory from FEISAR with his victory money, and began encouraging small junior teams to come to Finland to make a race team. The result was Xios, and the result of Xios was seven world championships, the second highest in living memory behind Qirex.
With a near-constant supply of excellent pilots from the Xios testing centres at Vantaa, Suomussalmi and Helsinki, Xios was riding high and as such fell far when the F9000 finally collapsed. Though a fairly honest team amongst those that raced, Xios was still more intent on winning than taking part and had not dropped out alongside Auricom. Kovalainen escaped alive from the subsequent media scrum, but he resigned shortly after.
The history of both teams is completely silent from then onwards until 15th October, 2172, when it announced that the two teams would be uniting. This took the AG world by surprise – eG-r and Xios had been very different ships and teams and it seemed like chalk and cheese. And especially with no race season to compete in, the project was labelled as madness.
Instead, as the rioting began to fade, the EG-X logo began to emerge as a name in heavy duty AG-ships, such as haulers and cranes. It seemed that Xios’ top-notch aerodynamics systems were working in perfect sync with eG-r’s neural link control systems, both of which were heavily guarded secrets. There were rumblings about them returning for the FX300 series, but EG-X delayed their adventure into the world of AG racing until FX350.
The racing fans and analysists saw a winning formula on paper. eG-r had always been let down by sometimes dodgy aero work and Xios lacked thrust. So putting the two together would create a flawless ship as long as the pilots were decent - which had never been a problem for Xios at least. But 2205 showed a different story, with a devastatingly fast ship that was slow in the corners and had poor shielding, despite the neural implants that were seen on the back of both Chang and Repo’s necks indicating that the pilots were nearly one with a ship (something Leona Silvaris of Piranha is somewhat envious about).
Although a team with a single lead figure such as Qirex or Icaras might have been able to direct a focus of resources onto one of the weak points - but the Chinese blamed the Finns and the Finns blamed the Chinese. Xios was still the racing team first and foremost and still had the fans rooting for their team; but eG-r had been focussed more on the technology and business, so they had cabals of shadowy Chinese businessmen behind them. It was the immovable object against the unstoppable force and the result was that apart from a new paint job, the EG-X went into the FX400 series without any major upgrades and suffered for it, only just managing to keep Goteki 45 at bay.
It hasn't helped that each half of the team's chose a pilot for their reasons, with the result that Chang and Repo have the worst relationship between any pilots on the grid, which has only got worse with the introduction of third pilots - the quiet Pole brought in by Xios has found that both her fellow pilots have an interest in her and though no-one will admit it, it may be that Mr Repo and Mr Chang are intensifying their battles with the view to win Miss Zuzovnitch's attention. Most race experts say they don't expect EG-X to remain one team for more than another season or two, with the belief that Xios will tie-up with Icaras and eG-r to pick Qirex as their new partner. Not a word has come out of either Beijing or Helskini about these rumours though...
Allies: None
Rivals: Goteki 45, Auricom
Arch-Rivals: FEISAR
Searching AntiGravity Racing Archives for subject ‘EG-X and FEISAR’
23 Matches Found...
Opening File...
You know what you are? You’re freaks! You’re –expletive- freaks! What sort of rational man says yes to putting a plug socket in the back of their head and sticking it into something with a turbine like that?
And hell, it’s not even a good ion core! Goteki, Piranha, even –expletive- Icaras can get their things to go fast, but not you. No, you’re off bragging about your –expletive- neural implants and your Aerodynamics... which if you’ll notice if you have two eyes, is exactly the same as ours. Oh, come on. Paint them the same and what’s the difference? The back wings? The wings that have to be pushed out a little further because of the –expletive- ridiculous waste of metal in the back of that stupid ship?
Xios was nothing but a team of opportunists who stole the best from FEISAR and bragged about it. And teaming up with a team of untalkative cyborgs really makes you look like you mean business. *subject is restrained by Pilot T. Ikrausus, previously of FEISAR* Fine, fine. *subject is given a firm warning by the stewards* Very well, I’m sorry. I did overreact a little. Perhaps we shall have to wait and see where EG-X turns up in relation to a proper team this year.
N. Testa, Chief of Operations, Federal European Industrial Science and Research.
Ship Details:
While EG-X is no longer as notorious as their predecessor was for hiding information from the Race Commission, the ship details are being kept firmly under wraps. More information has been provided (reluctantly) on the pilots' part, but the secret to their thrusters are for private eyes only. Both Piranha and Goteki 45 have questioned why EG-X is being so secretive when they aren't even the strongest team on the grid in either thrust or top speed, though Connor Burns of Icaras has suggested that it is more the aero which needs to be kept under wraps, much to the chagrin of the Chinese half of the team.
One problem the EG-X has for the FX500 series is that its' 'Fury' ship, nicknamed the FG-X by some fans, has undergone a massive body shift and an engine reboot like all the other craft on the grid - but the fact that neither part of the team was working with each other means that the result is a fairly poor ship by Fury standards - without a great deal more thrust, speed and handling than the FX400 ship and heavier armour, it means that Zuzovnitch (the only pilot willing to speak regularly at press conferences) has admitted the ship is somewhat hard to control. In its' defence though, eG-r have been hard at work on the computer simulations and it is one of the ships to beat in Zone Battle events.
Lead Pilot - Mikael Repo (
Every inch the racer that Xios represented and loved at the height of their success in the F9000 series, Mikael is fast, devilishly handsome and can put away an entire bottle of vodka without keeling over. Easily dominating the unsuspecting Yuen Chang in testing during the FX300 series, Mikael asserted himself as team leader for FX350 and FX400 despite the Chinaman's return to form particularly in the Flash and Rapier events. Backed by the hardcore racing fans and the Xios aerodynamicists, Mikael has admitted more than once that his biggest rival is the number two man and with EG-X's poor handling ship not proving worth more than two gold medals in FX400, it was a straight fight in the qualifying stakes between the two with Repo coming out on top once again, meaning he takes Lead Pilot status into FX500
Mikael is very popular with the hardcore racing fans for his absolute dedication to the job in hand, sometimes getting out of a craft at the end of a punishing race without a bead of sweat on his brow, meaning that he has adopted the moniker that many Flying Finns of older days wore - the 'Ice Man'. He is a lot curter with reporters and fans than his team-mates though, with the effect being that the more popular pilot is the one who does the least for the sponsors and for the fans.
Second Pilot - Yuen Chang (
A test tube baby orphaned after his parents were murderered in a Shanghai nightclub, Yuen was adopted by the head of the Chinese branch of EG-X, Hua Chang. Yuen could fly a basic child's antigravity scooter before he could walk and by the time he was ten he was reaching Sub-Sonic levels in Zone simulations. He is a surgical instrument to Repo's slashed sword of flying style - Yuen knows the racing line and does not deviate for an instant unless it is to smash someone out of his way.
Chang is expected to take over EG-X when his adoptive father dies and select a new pilot from his fellow orphans adopted and trained by the academy in Beijing, but unusually for a son about to receive great things from his father, Yuen has been spending almost all his race victory money to pay for expensive treatments to keep his father alive. In true eG-r tradition he has never said why or given any decent explanation, but the speculation is that he wants to retire as the better pilot between him and Repo.
Third Pilot - Gabrielle Zuzovnitch ()
Gabrielle was the daughter of a rich Polish businessman who wanted his daughter to go into business with him at Ignition Energy Drinks, but it was at a race event that Przymyslaw Zuzovnitch took his family to that Gabrielle got a meet and greet with the aged Natasha Belmondo, working for Xios as a talent spotter. Natasha convinced Gabrielle's father to let her have a go in a simple AG-kart, where the girl showed good promise, and Belmondo offered to pay for Zuzovnitch's daughter to enrol in the Xios academy in Suomussalmi. In ten years, the Pole matured into an excellent pilot and quite the woman, as evidenced by the first time that she entered the room with her new future team-mates only for them to stop bickering for the first time in hours.
'Float Nation' magazine is of course, all over the idea of a love triangle within the team but the attitude that Gabrielle takes appears to be one of complete indifference to both the men in the team for the most part, only spending time with them when they offer opportunities to train with them. A more likely situation was sent in by an anonymous letter to the magazine, suggesting that Gabrielle has taken a leaf out of Belmondo's book and is using her charm to try and learn the skills that make Chang and Repo such determined pilots. Certainly with her move up from reserve pilot in the FX350 league she has put on a stellar performance despite not winning a gold medal, and it is likely we will see much more of Belmondo's protégée in the future, especially since she has no enemies to focus on beating, and certainly not ones within her own team.
I was hooked all the way through! 
Originally Posted by Challenger #001
