Tamiya Group C Series Round 1 – Report

Round one of the Tamiya Group C Series took place last weekend on the beautiful Vallelunga track, 40km north of Rome, Italy.  Former European B Champion Riccardo Acciari took the win ahead of newly crowned 235mm National Champion Alessandro Manciocchi, with Massimo Cardelli rounding up the podium.  The drivers have been graced by two days of wonderful weather, which made for a pretty big attendance on Saturday as well. The debut for this championship, the race unfolded flawlessly despite some last-minute withdrawals due to the seasonal flu outbreak in Rome which caused the number of heats to decrease and the time table to shift slightly.  The race format – with one seeding practice, four 5-minute qualifiers in parc fermee regime and three 10-minute finals – proved challenging and guaranteed plenty of track time for each driver.  After seeding, Riccardo Acciari would be top of the list, followed very closely by Massimo Cardelli (3/100ths over three laps) and Alessandro Manciocchi. Qualifying wouldn’t be much different, with Riccardo putting together the best five laps in the first three rounds wrapping the overall TQ in front of Alessandro, with Massimo in third. Alessandro Bagagli and Emiliano Bartolini (both winners of national titles in various classes) wrapped up the top five.

Roberto Pistola was BQ, followed closely by Marco Sarra, the two battling each other for the whole 30 minutes of the three B-Mains, finishing only seconds apart in each race, proving once again the high level of the field.

While the B-Main featured a great battle for the win, the A-Main saw Acciari taking two tone-to-tone wins in the first two legs and deciding to sit out for the third, which saw Manciocchi and Cardelli putting up a great fight for the win and the overall second place, with Alessandro crossing the line in 1st to bring home the second spot on the podium while Massimo finished third overall.

A special mention Goes to Ed Van Giezen, who drove 1800km from the Netherlands just to attend, and it seems like he is also planning to return for round 2, which will take place on December 14th again on the same track.  From the organisers, a big thank you goes to all the drivers for their sportsmanship, to those who couldn’t make it in the end, and to Mirella and Luigi from the wonderful Miniautodromo Vallelunga Rc for their hospitality.

Source: Tamiya Group C Series [Facebook]