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December 14, 2025

Urbain takes Q2 from Coelho at Asia Touring Car Championship

Lucas Urbain has TQ’d the second round of qualifying at the Asia Touring Car Championship, the Awesomatix driver making the most of the challenging track conditions to top the times ahead of Top Seed Bruno Coelho and Akio Sobue. With rain preventing any action at Hongyu GDC track yesterday, while a dry start to Sunday conditions would be much cooler and windier than Friday when it was Infinity’s Naoto Matsukura who took the opening TQ. With Matsukura posting a time of 19/5:07.597 in Q1, even with a round of free practice run to open the day and get some rubber back down on the track, Urbain’s TQ time this morning was almost half a lap slower with the French driver running 19/5:14.210 with Coelho just 0.145 behind. The top heat would see mistakes from a number of drivers including Matsukura who ended up P7. Schumacher’s Michal Orlowski also had a spin, after which he said his car was OK as he held station on track with Urbain, but the almost 21-second lap 3 meant his time was only good enough for P6. Another strong run from Infinity’s Ryosuke Yamamoto saw him back up his Top 3 in Q1 with a fourth ahead of Axon’s Hayato Ishioka.

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December 14, 2025

New cars & parts at the Asia Touring Car Championship

With the Asia Touring Car Championship unofficially the warm-up race for next April’s IFMAR ISTC World Championships in China, a lot of manufacturers are using this weekend’s race to test new parts and in some cases completely new cars. As previously mentioned in our opening report from the Hongyy GDC track on Friday, Schumacher has a brand new platform with three examples running in the hands of Michal Orlowski, Mattia Collina, and Pekko Iivonen, all of the team well briefed to give away nothing about the British manufacturers latest project. We also already know that Tamiya has new parts it is testing with the iconic Japanese manufacturer and it TRF designer Kiyo Suzuki not wanting to officially disclose any more details on what they are testing. HPI, who excited the touring car world when they showed off a competition spec car they are working on back in October, are here with the car which now features a new chassis design. While our usual Chassis Focus feature will be thin on the ground from this race, two manufacturers that have cars they can show us are Awesomatix and Xray. Awesomatix said they take a slightly different approach to other manufacturers with their new car releases and they are running a standard latest spec A800RR as their development is always ongoing but Max Machler did say they might have one or two new parts come the World Championship.

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December 13, 2025

Rain cancels Saturday action at Asia Touring Car Championship

While it was widely expected, unfortunately rain has forced FEMCA to cancel Saturday’s action at the Asia Touring Car Championship at the new Hongyu GDC facility in Foshan, China. Having altered yesterday’s scheduled to try and get 2 rounds of qualifying completed, unfortunately a light rain shower at the end of seeding delayed the program and it was only possible to get 1 round of qualifying done under the lights. With four rounds of qualifying having been scheduled for today, the organisers are now working on a revised timetable for tomorrow. With Sunday’s weather looking good, the plan is to get 2 more rounds of qualifying in before moving to finals. In Q1, it was the Infinity of Naoto Matsukura who was fastest from Axon’s Akio Sobue while in Stock Xray’s Shin Sawada, a podium finisher in Modified at these Championships last year when it was held indoors, TQ’d the round from team-mates Jan Ratheisky and Adam Izsay. With the pits at the very impressive multi track Hongyu GDC buzzing with 181 racers making this the biggest & most international FEMCA Touring Car race yet, it is great to see FEMCA’s newly introduced Junior Class with controlled chassis & electric excelling with 31 budding future World Champions taking part.

December 12, 2025

Matsukura takes opening qualifier under lights in China

Infinity’s Naoto Matsukura has taken the opening round of qualifying under the lights at the Asia Touring Car Championship in China, the number 2 seed topping the delayed and eventful Q1 ahead of Axon’s Akio Sobue. With rain after seeding delaying the schedule at Hongyu GDC and a full round of practice run to get the track back up to speed, when the final run of the evening came around Top Seed Bruno Coelho would struggle. The rear of his Infinity clearly not at one with the track. Losing the car a number of times, Matsukura lucky to not collect his team-mate, the World Champion would end up P9 at the conclusion of the round. With Matsukura taking the TQ by 1.2-seconds from Sobue, only Jin Sawada managed a faster lap time but pushing the limits of his electrics the Japanese Xray driver would run out of battery with a lap to go costing him a certain Top 2 run as he got a DNF. Behind the Top 2, Infinity’s Ryosuke Yamamoto made it a Japanese trio at the top of the times ahead of the all new Schumachers of Michal Orlowski and Pekko Iivonen with Awesomatix’s Lucas Urbain completing the Top 6 for what could prove a critical run. Having originally planned two qualifiers today because of the threat of rain, but only get one, the chances of a wet day tomorrow seem even higher as drivers left the track for the evening.

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December 12, 2025

Coelho top seed at stacked Asia Championship

Infinity’s Bruno Coelho is the Top Seed at a stacked Asia Touring Car Championship at the impressive new Hongyu GDC track in Foshan, China. The defending champion of the race formerly known as the FEMCA Championship, the World Champion set the pace over the 4-rounds of seeding from team-mate & former World Champion Naoto Matsukura with the Xray of Jin Sawada completing the Top 3. With the venue set to host the ISTC World Championships next April, this weekend’s racing while not an official Warm Up race has attracted all the major drivers and manufacturers with the exception of Mugen Seiki although winner of the last World Championship to be hosted in China in 2016, Ronald Volker will arrive over the weekend for testing with many of the racers staying for up to a week of further testing after the race. In terms of cars, manufacturers are here with plenty of new updates/prototype parts and even completely new cars. While Awesomatix is here with its standard car, Lucas Urbain 6th for them in seeding, at the other end of the scale Schumacher have a completely brand new car with Michal Orlowski ending up 7th in second. Once the dominant force at ISTC Worlds, winning titles with Marc Rheinard who is not racing but is due to arrive for testing, and Jilles Groskamp, the Dutch legend racing in China for the first time in 10-year, iconic brand Tamiya are here with a number of updates to their car which is being driven by Souta Goto. Unfortunately with a treat of rain for Saturday and light rain arriving at the end of seeding, it looks like the event may see some rescheduling. The first two rounds of qualifying having already been brought forward to Friday afternoon.

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December 11, 2025

’25 1:8 Onroad World Championship Chassis Focus Index

Another season of IFMAR World Championships wrapped up in Chile last weekend with 1:8 Onroad the fourth & final race of 2025. While IFMAR’s original World Championship would attract a small entry, that didn’t take away from the racing at the front with qualifying ending with cars from four different manufacturers making up the new for 2025 Direct to Final Top 4 qualifiers. For the 1-hour final that number would grow to 5 as Shepherd’s Tim Wood won the Last Chance Qualifier to represent the now British owned brand as the 11th car on the grid. Statistics compiled by IFMAR, this the 24th running of the title race, would show Mugen Seiki as the most popular chassis ahead of Capricorn and Shepherd who tied for second. Racing around the very large CACH, the most common source of power came from Ielasi Tuned followed by Max Power, who thanks to Shoki Takahata make it back to back engine World titles. In terms of radios used, Sanwa was the choice of over 50% of the drivers. With 2 X Mugen Seiki, 2 X Capricorn, 2 X Shepherds, and one Serpent and Xray each, we managed to get our hands on 8 cars from the five manufacturers represented in the final.

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December 10, 2025

Xray X12 1-piece 1.5mm Alu Chassis for Floating Servo

Having released a 2.0mm carbon version last week, Xray has now introduced its 1-piece chassis for floating servo in a 1.5mm Aluminium option. The thinner, optional aluminium chassis lowers CG and generates more flex and is recommended mainly for racing in the modified category, to generate more overall grip, and to increase mid-corner steering. CNC-machined from premium & super-lightweight Swiss 7075 T6 aluminium to reduce the weight and additionally black anodised.

Source: Xray [teamxray.com]

December 9, 2025

Infinity IF14 Speciale Low Friction Pulleys

Infinity has introduced a number of optional Low Friction Pulleys for their IF14 Speciale 1:10 Electric Touring Car. The pulley is offered in 38T and 40T option while the centre pulley is available in 20T or 22T variants. Produced in a black colour specification the pulleys reduce driver train friction. Additionally to offer performance gain, Infinity has also released Lightweight Upper Pivot Balls that precision-machined from high-strength titanium. They features a shorter screw length than the standard kit upper pivot ball expanding setup possibilities. The Japanese manufacturer highly recommends these pivot ball when using the aluminium hub carrier on the Speciale.

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