July 5, 2013

2013 FEMCA Championships – Announcement

2013 FEMCA Championships - Announcement

The Car Modelling Association of China have contacted us to invite everyone to the 2013 FEMCA Championships for 1/8th buggy and 1/10th ISTC which takes place in Beijing from the 18th to the 28th of August. The organisers are putting in a huge effort to make this an amazing race with a new purpose built facility for offroad located in the Fengtai Sports Center, which hosted many major sports events including the softball during the Olympics, as well as the already existing tarmac onroad track which previously hosted the Beijing International RC Invitational. Together with Masami Hirosaka, Trevor Reid and Charlie Siribodhi from FEMCA they will ensure that this a well run event. China is still an emerging market for RC and believe it or not this will be one of the first major Championships to be held on the mainland. Entries are open right now, and there are already some major names confirmed, and Red RC will be in attendance to cover the event. For more details you can visit the official event website here or view the stage 1 & 2 reports here.

July 4, 2013

On the Grapevine – Kirchberg

On the Grapevine – Kirchberg

My latest travels took me back to Austria, this time for the concluding round of the two race Euro Nitro Series ‘Pilot Series’. I don’t make any apologies for the fact that onroad nitro racing is my favorite class as it was the accidental discovery of a small club of 1:8 Onroad club racing in a car park over 25-years ago that got me and my father, and then my brother, hooked on a sport that myself & my brother now have the pleasure of calling our occupation. It took a number of months of hard saving and ultimately a rather big contribution from my father to get started out with a second-hand Associated RC250 (younger readers may need to Google this high tech chassis!). Unfortunately after only a few races my Super Tigre engine, originally designed for use in an rc airplane, expired when the ends of the crank decided to have a falling out and split. With my short but very enjoyable r/c involvement now in serious jeopardy, the engine failure would actually prove to be a key moment in my professional life as with no money to buy a new one I turned to the idea of sponsorship. Picking up the Golden Pages (an Irish business directory), on my third call I struck gold with full size car battery company Exide agreeing to sponsor me a new engine and from this moment I took a keen interest in the area of sponsorship and public relations as I typed up a report, had photographs developed and posted them (no e-mail back then) to Exide and my growing list of sponsors. The experienced gained from doing this lead me to being asked to help a friend, who raced karts, to write a report for a local paper and from there I ended up working professionally in 1:1 motorsport for over 15-years before going full circle and returning to RC racing when I was asked to do some press work for VRC and Serpent in 2004. The 1:10 200mm European Championships in Madrid in 2007 would the be first event Red RC ever would attend and report on, so you can see why I will always have a close affection for onroad nitro.

Continue reading On the Grapevine here

July 3, 2013

Paul Lemieux confirmed for ETS Season Finale

Paul Lemieux confirmed for ETS Season Finale

Xray have confirmed that multiple US National Champion Paul Lemieux will compete at the season finale of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series at the Hudy Arena in Slovakia from the 19th to 21st of July. The Factory Xray driver has made a number of appearances at the World renowned series, his most recent coming last year at the fifth round of the championship in the Netherlands, prior to him winning the Worlds warmup race. Fielding a strong factory team, Xray are looking to put on a good showing at what is the company’s test track, with Paul being joined by ETS regulars Alexander Hagberg, Magnus Vassmar & Martin Hudy and in Pro Stock, Championship leader, Marek Cerny who is looking to wrap up the title. Set to be a spectacular battle on track, the Hudy Arena have been pulling out all the stops to ensure that everything is equally spectacular off track as well, going so far as organising tours of the Xray factory to all racers wishing to get a rare glimpse behind the scenes of this state of the art facility. For those wishing to compete in this the final race of our sixth season, entries are still open here and more information can be found here.

July 2, 2013

Jörn Neumann wins 2wd at NRW Offroad Cup Rd7

Jörn Neumann wins 2wd at NRW Offroad Cup Rd7

Last weekend saw Team Durango’s Jörn Neumann attend the NRW Offroad Cup for the second time. Since its creation in 2009, the NORC has become one of the most popular German electric offroad series on the club racing level and occasionally also attracts drivers from Luxembourg and the Netherlands. As other races in the region proved not to be as attractive in the past few years, the clubs involved decided to hold the West German regional meetings together with the NORC in 2013. As a result, Team Durango’s Jörn Neumann joined the NORC crowd again for an intense weekend of racing at the MC Dortmund’s clay track. Dominated by Short Course racing in the last few years, the NORC has recently experienced a surge in the buggy groups. Being the only driver to manage 15 laps, Jörn’s win in 2WD was never at risk, but the battle for runner up was interesting to watch, and a tight affair between the two Yokomo B-Max2 MR drivers Yannic Prümper and Jens Becker.

Continue reading the report here

July 2, 2013

Real World Relevance?

Real World Relevance?

My column this time around was going to be about tires. But, following the events of this weekend’s British Formula 1 Grand Prix, it appears all the best headlines have been snatched up by the newspapers across the world. In thinking about why manufacturers are involved in full size motorsport, I am reminded of a conversation I had last week with one of my racing friends. We were discussing the results of one of the recent RC World Championships and thus who the current World Champion driver and manufacturers were. He then replied “well, it doesn’t really matter to me, because I’m never going to race on that track or with those tires”. That got me thinking – one of the big movements in full size motorsport at present is to enhance the “real world relevance” of the various categories and formulas. Essentially, what is learnt from building faster, more efficient or more aerodynamic race cars filters through into the road cars you and I can buy. Does that also apply to the RC world?

Continue reading Oli’s column here

July 2, 2013

Control tires for IFMAR 1/8th Worlds

Control tires for IFMAR 1/8th Worlds

IFMAR have made a surprise announcement that they will run control tires at this year’s 1/8th Worlds in Japan. This is in response to the ongoing tire treatment story which it says “…is a poison that keeps drivers at home and for sure also the reason a lot of drivers stopped in 2012. Although we are able to detect the majority of the products that are available there is still a market and this market tries to make products that are more and more difficult to detect. It is like doping in all sport activities, there will always be people that want to try it and people that produce it.” It will however not be a single brand control tire but in fact a control tire from multiple manufacturers as long as they will be supplying at least 10 drivers at the event. All tires from all brands must be identical in diameter as well as shore and they will be accepting applications from tire companies in the next 2 weeks. Read the full statement here (PDF).

July 1, 2013

2013 Nordic Championships – Announcement

2013 Nordic Championships - Announcement

This year’s Nordic Championships for 1/8th offroad will be held in Vantaan Vauhtikeskus, Finland from the 2nd to the 4th of August. Your standard Nordics format, best 2 from 4 rounds of qualifying with EFRA style finals, the track has a clay surface with approximately 5 jump combinations with lap times of about 39-40 seconds. Entries are open until the 27th of July so if you wish to compete against the best Scandinavians then get signed up. You can find more information here (PDF).

July 1, 2013

Robert Batlle wins 2013 Trofeo Novarossi

Robert Batlle wins 2013 Trofeo Novarossi

Last weekend was the annual Trofeo Novarossi took place on the fantastic Gussago track in Italy and World Champion Robert Batlle (Mugen/Novarossi/ProCircuit/Nitrolux) sent us this report. ‘We arrived on friday morning to visit Novarossi Factory as every year, amazing factory for one of the best engine manufacturers in the world. The weather on Thursday was terrible and we had to wait until Friday afternoon to start practice. We could make only 4 or 5 tanks due to the day was finished. Saturday was sunny and the race could start. There were a lot of good drivers like the well known 2013 French champion Jerome Aigoin, the 2013 European B Champion Marco “Vale tutto” Baruffolo, Italian Champion Davide Tortorici, the young Italian star Davide Ongaro, Alex Zanchettin, Alessandro Stocco, Novarossi’s engineer Federico Sala, and more… also Mrs Grazia, Mr Cesare Rossi and all Novarossi crew were watching us during the race. Qualyfing was a fight for TQ between Jerome and myself, the first round was won by Jerome, second, third and fourth went to myself, and the last round was the Italian driver Del Petre who got it. Sunday was even warmer than Saturday so we had to drive on hard compounds to be able to make a whole semi or final. There was a fight during almost all Semi A for the win between Tortorici and myself, he had a mistake which allowed me to win so Davide finished second. In Semi B the two fast guys were Aigoin and Baruffolo but both had problems so they couldn’t win, even though they were able to bump up to the main final. In the final we started really well with no mistakes while all the others got together, so we could take advantage which allowed us to win this race. Second spot went for Jerome Aigoin and third the young Ongaro.’

Thanks to Robert Batlle for the report.

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