May 2, 2025

Ongaro is Philippine Masters Top Qualifier

Team Associated’s Davide Ongaro will go for a third consecutive win at the Philippine Masters as the Top Qualifier, his main rival in Manila Burak Kilic unable to force the battle for the overall TQ to go to tomorrow’s final qualifier. Originally two qualifiers were scheduled to make up Friday’s timetable but with a chance of rain effecting the rest of the weekend, race control pushed through with getting a third round in the books. With Ongaro having taken the opening 2 qualifiers, Kilic had to deliver a TQ run having come close in the previous round, but it wasn’t to be. The Mugen Seiki would get caught out on his penultimate lap by light rain that started as the third round concluded. Going off the track, Kilic would retire to the pits as Ongaro took the round ahead of Infinity pairing Kouki Kato and Naoto Matsukura. Behind them, despite a mistake, Ryan Lutz maintained his run of Top 5 times taking his Kyosho to the fourth fastest time ahead of Team Associated’s Alex Bernadzik and last year’s podium finisher Atsushi Hara. With the TQ settled the focus of Q4 will be on the battle for second between Asian Buggy Championship debutant Kilic and last year’s season finale winner Kouki.

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May 2, 2025

Roche P12V2 Option Parts

1:12 manufacturer Roche has some new option parts for its Rapide P12V and V2 chassis releasing a steel rear axle and a Version 2 optional aluminium servo horn for the Xray servo saver.  The new material hollow steel axle improves drivability and offer more durability than the kit’s carbon axle.  A new design direct to the shaft aluminium wheel & spur gear holder improves weight balance on rotation.  The spur gear is mounted by 3 pieces machine cut custom size M2 screw, simple and easy install by 1.5mm hex driver.  The Version 2 aluminium servo horn for the Xray servo and other brands of 1:12 chassis with a front mounting servo has an extra 2mm space for steering linkage position to make more ackermann adjustment.  And two different steering links mount position, the 7.5mm gives less steering response while the 7mm increases steering response.

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May 2, 2025

Core RC Pace 100RM 1S Mini Competition ESC

Schumacher brand Core RC has introduced a new 1S Mini Brushless Competition Speed Control called the Pace 100RM which is suitable for a wide range of 1S racing classes including LMP12, and GT12.  With a huge range of features the PACE 100RM is Mini sized and at just 31.5x25x16mm is ultra small making it perfect for the tight spaces in chassis for these 1:12 classes.  Fully programmable with the Core RC Bluetooth Set Up Module and app based technology, the ESC is BRCA ‘Blinky’ Legal.

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May 2, 2025

Kilic closer but another TQ run for Ongaro

While a repeat of the opening qualifier result, Q2 at the Philippine Masters saw Mugen Seiki’s Burak Kilic get a lot closer to Team Associated’s Davide Ongaro.  With a 1-second buffer over the Manila race first timer in Q1, the defending back to back winner of Asia’s biggest annual 1:8 Offroad race had just 4/10ths in hand over Kilic in the second round, the later saying afterwards traffic had cost him a the chance of the TQ.  Summing up his run Ongaro reported the wind was causing him some issues but added ‘wind is part of the game and you can do nothing.  For the rest (of the run) it was good’.  On his performance Kilic said, ‘It was really good but just held me up from making the TQ.  I mean it was the same for Davide he also had many traffic but we made a good race’.  While the original schedule for Friday’s action was just two qualifiers, the event famous driver’s banquet taking place this evening in the capital city, the threat of rain tomorrow means drivers will go at it one more time today with a third round of qualifying.  While up front things looked, again the Top 2 the only drivers to cover 9-laps, the second round produced some notable improvements from Naoto Matsukra and Pekko Iivonan who posted the 3rd and 4th fastest times ahead of Ryan Lutz.  Having had a Top 3 in Q1, Sworkz diver Mattia Polito could only manage P7, the Italian reporting he had a complete lack of traction this time round.

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May 2, 2025

Ongaro from Kilic as qualifying gets underway in Manila

With qualifying getting underway at the Philippine Masters in Manila this morning, it was Team Associated’s Davide Ongaro who topped the first of the 4 scheduled qualifiers from Mugen Seiki’s Burak Kilic.  Having topped yesterday’s seeding from Infinity’s Kouki Kato,  Ongaro completed 9-laps of the Circulo Verde Track over the 5-minute qualifier with Kilic, the only other drive to make 9-laps, just 1-second off.  It was to be a frustrating start to qualifying for Kato as he crashed on his opening lap and needed to be marshal.  Losing 4-seconds, the fired up Japanese driver would go on to set the fastest lap by an impressive margin as he recovered to salvage a P5.  Making it an all European based Top 3, Italy’s Mattia Polito managed to go ahead of Kyosho’s Ryan Lutz on the final lap.  Seeded No.8, the American lost 3/10ths of a second to the Sworkz driver on their 8th lap giving Polito 3rd for the round by just 0.048.  Behind them reigning Asian Buggy Championships Champion Christian Wolhuter completed the Top 6, this weekend’s second round of the Cayote backed championship the Australian Sworkz driver’s first outing of the season.

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May 2, 2025

G-Force ‘Xtrada’ 1:10 4WD Buggy

After a number of successful collaborations with RC legend Masami Hirosaka, most notably the MX-4 Forever, Japan’s G-Force has announced the upcoming release of the ‘Xtrada’ 1:10 4WD buggy.  Masami introduced the new belt drive buggy in a video that coincided with the company’s G-Force Competition Cup event that took place at Tsukuba RC Arena, the new name for the world famous Yatabe Arena.  G-Force say their newest kit is themed around a ‘neo-classic design’, with Masami going through all the details in the Japanese language video presentation (view video here).   The planned release date for the Xtrada is between Summer and Fall this year with pricing yet to be decided.

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May 1, 2025

Ongaro tops seeding at Philippine Masters

Team Associated’s Davide Ongaro goes into qualifying at the Philippine Masters tomorrow as the Top Seed, the Italian being one of three different drivers to top each of the seeding rounds today at Round 2 of the Cayote backed Asian Buggy Championships.  With Infinity’s Kouki Kato laying down the opening pace, Mugen Seiki’s Burak Kilic topped the second round but fell short of bettering Kato’s fastest 2-consecutive laps.  With Ongaro somewhat off the pace in SP2, he would bounce back for the final round being the only one of the Top 6 to improve finding 8/10ths of a second on his previous best to better the Japanese driver’s time by a 1/10th.  Overall Kato, winner of the 2024 Asian Buggy Championship season final in Indonesia, will be the No.2 seed ahead of Kilic.  Team Associated’s Alex Bernadzik ended the day P4, the 2023 ABC Australia race winner’s best run coming in SP2,  followed by Infinity’s Naoto Matsukura and Sworkz’ Mattia Polito.

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May 1, 2025

Schumacher Atom 3 Hex Rear Wheel System

Schumacher has introduced a new Hex Rear Wheel System with spool and Gear Diff Option for their Atom 3 in the GT12 Class.  Designed with weight, strength and concentricity in mind, a spool set can offer improved steering in medium and high grip conditions, improved acceleration and a reduction in weight.  Combined with the new Contact V2 Hex Wheel, this set up can provide the ultimate GT12 performance on medium to high grip conditions.  With this set up you can use the new Contact V2 Hex Wheel for Spool or Gear Diff running, no more need to have different wheels and so trying a diff or a spool is more accessible to everyone.  The Hex Wheel Gear Diff Option is best suited for low to medium grip conditions.  With the new wheel it allows for a Gear Diff to be used with just one M4 nut fixing. This is a game changer for club racing because it is now easier and quicker to swap tyres.  Easy to drive and set up and extremely tuneable with the correctly chosen oil.  It has steel axle for strength and reliability.

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