12hr Tamiya Marathon Hungary

Last weekend saw the 12 hours Tamiya Marathon held in Nagydorog, Hungary, organised by the Hungarian Tamiya Dealer. The endurance race was held for the second time, after a very successful first event last winter. The race also was the 1st Round of the Hungarian Endurance Championship and started 08:00 with the kit cars handed to the teams for building which was also included to the race time. Just like at the old Le-Mans races where the racers had to run across the track to jump into their cars with the exception that their cars were already built. The rules were not changed from the previous year, each team this year got a 2007 Subaru Impreza TT-01 kit, which had to be assembled, painted and stickered. The only difference was the colour of the bodies. Two Mabuchi 540 motor and two sets of Take-Off tires were allowed to use, in case of broken parts only one of each could be changed without extra penalty (certain percentage from the total laps were subtracted at the end).

The fastest team called Meno Manok built the car within 42 minutes which was super fast and earned them a place on the podium at the end even though they were not the fastest on the track. Last year’s winners the local team called Narancssargak (The Orange Team) got their car on the track just 5 minutes behind and soon took the lead. The KGY Motorsport Team was on track at 09:01 almost 20 minutes behind the first team and were 40 laps behind the Narancssarga Team and started to close the gap very slowly. Around 4 hours racing on the track and KGY Motorsport got the lead and from then on they kept it until the end. The Narancssarga Team was fast but had to change the motor two times (for the second time they put the first motor back) and also had problems turning on their lights at 17:00 which was obligatory for all the teams. Part of the ligths were turned off in the hall for a certain amount of time as well.

The KGY Motorsport deserved the win with a very consistent drive with all five team members, pitting around every 30 minutes using 5 LRP Lipo batteries and only 1 motor! Their longest pit stop was 2:09 minutes and had to stop only 20 times. The second place went to the defending champion Narancssarga Team and the Meno Manok got the third place.

The championship will continue in May and July and the winner of the series will compete at Uwe Rheinard’s 24 Hour race in Andernach at the end of the summer.

Thanks to Balint Rajki for the report.