Quek wins 2018 Urban Touring Series season opener
The opening round of the 2018 Urban Touring Series was held this past weekend in downtown Singapore. A strong turnout of local racers, including numerous new racers, was further boosted by the presence of Infinity’s 5-time World Champion, Naoto Matsukura, who gamely took on the challenge of running the 17.5T blinky class which the series features. In qualifying, 2017 series champ, Dominic Quek (Xray), managed to hold-off Naoto by 0.5 seconds to take the TQ in round 1 of qualifying. In qualifying round 2, however, another fast local and former TITC champion, PY Tang (ARC) would find additional pace to challenge Dominic and Naoto. After trading places throughout the 5-minute run, Dominic managed to take his second TQ round by 0.3 seconds, and with that secure overall TQ for the day. With a second 2nd place in Q3, PY Tang would qualify 2nd overall, ahead of Naoto in 3rd.
In the A-main, Dominic managed to withstand the early pressure from PY and Naoto behind him to eventually pull away to win leg 1 by 1.2 seconds over PY Tang, with Naoto in 3rd. In leg 2, the anticipated battle between the top-3 however failed to materialise as Dominic pulled away early on as PY and Naoto battled for 2nd. This left Dominic to claim a win by a margin of more than 4 secs and an early overall win, while PY held on to take 2nd once again. With Dominic sitting out leg 3, the fight would be left to PY and Naoto to determine the final order on the podium. The fight was intense in the early stages as the clearly faster Naoto challenged PY for the lead. A mistake by PY opened the door for Naoto to capitalise but contact shortly after held both up as Hasron Robana (Xray) inherited the lead. A mistake by Hasron however allowed both Naoto and PY to go through. A second mistake by PY resulted in the need to be marshalled, giving Naoto the chance to finally pull away and secure the leg win and 2nd on the podium.
Final results:
1. Dominic Quek – Xray/Hobbywing
2. Naoto Matsukura – Infinity/Hobbywing
3. PY Tang – ARC/MuchMore
4. Hasron Robana – Xray/Team Orion
5. Chee Lip Keong – Yokomo/Team Powers
6. Sean Lee – Tamiya/Team Orion
7. Nelson Lee – Yokomo/Team Orion
8. Sebastian Lee – Tamiya/Team Orion
Source: Urban PlaySpace [facebook.com]
