The city of Montbrison played host to the opening round of the French 1/10th Electric Offroad National Championships. The 2WD class podium was occupied by foreign drivers with Polish front runner Michal Orlowski (Schumacher) taking the win from Japan’s Sigiura Yusuke (Kyosho) and Belgium Xray driver Nico Risser. In the 4WD class Nico Risser lead an Xray 1-2-3 with Lorenzo Crolla and Mathieu Briere completing the podium.
The 30th Annual Cactus Classic race was held this past weekend in Phoenix, Arizona and it saw a nice mixture of drivers battling it out for the top spots in the Modified classes. 2WD Modified Buggy had TQ Spencer Rivkin (Team Associated) taking the winning honours, coming from the TQ spot, from TLR’s Dakotah Phend and Team Associated’s Ryan Cavalieri. Runner-up after the qualifiers, Jared Tebo, had to settle for fourth.
The opening round of the Spanish 1/8th On-road Championships was held at the Automodelismo Ronda club this past weekend. Alberto Fernandez would lead the proceedings during practice but it was Nacho Lopez who came out fastest after the qualifiers, winning three of the five rounds. Ruben Olivares with two round TQs placed himself second after the qualifiers with Victor Gonzalez and Jacobo Guerrero coming in third and fourth. The semifinals had Nacho taking the pole position for the finals from Victor but problems around the 18 minute mark meant a DNF for Gonzalez, denying him a battle for the win and allowing Nacho Lopez to cruise to the victory at round one of the championship, some 2 laps ahead of Ruben Olivares with Jorge Revert completing the podium result another three laps down.
Image: Ruben Olivares
Round one of the Shanghai SRGP series was held at the JunTi TRS track in Shanghai, China. The event attracted both local talent and also experienced racers such as JJ Wang, Rocket Zhang, Wanghaifeng, and others. The qualifying was won by JJ Wang with a six seconds margin on the second placed driver but positions 2 to 6 were only separated by a single second, highlighting the stiff competition at the event. The mains saw JJ Wang (Team Associated) taking easy wins to grab the overall win with one leg to spare. Behind him Chao Gor (HB) and Jimmy Qian (Xray) completed the top 3 result.
Source: Xray [teamxray.com]
Rumours about a possible new Tamiya 1/10th electric touring car are around for some time and with the TRF factory team trying to hide their prototype cars with negligible success during the recent races, things now start to materialise. Since the weekend first official information is available about the features of the TRF419X named kit that will include newly designed parts such as super short shock absorbers and a new aluminium 05G front suspension mount that offers a 0.5mm lower setting that the previous 1XD-F part for improved cornering stability. Other parts included are redesigned suspension arms, front and rear bulkheads, a new carbon fibre and aluminium servo mount, new rear uprights, damper stays and battery holders. More information should become available in time for the release which is schedule for May.
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The 2nd annual Palmetto Classic race was held in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with a total of 154 entries. Griffin Hanna would sweep qualifying of the 2WD and 4WD Modified Buggy classes and in the 2WD A-main Braydon Obremski kept Griffin honest until he ran into radio issues, allowing Griffin to take the win from Monty Reeder in second and Kevin Bullock in third. Patrick Rossiter and Jason Smith would round out the top 5 result. In the 10 minute 4WD Buggy A-main it was again Griffin Hanna who came out fastest, this time from Alex Muler and Braydon Obremski in second and third respectively. Austin Odum and Josh Knight completed the top 5.
Vigor RC have introduced a set of 44mm rear dual joint driveshafts for the Yokomo BD7 touring car. Made from high-quality spring steel and featuring 1.8mm diameter cross pins the driveshafts are meant to offer a significantly higher durability while the included thin 3mm bearings make the driveshaft longer for smoother cornering at higher speeds. The rear shafts can also be used in the front of the car for fine-tuning purposes.
Source: Vigor RC [vigorrc.com]
The 30th Annual Cactus Classic race was held this past weekend at Hobbytown/SRS in Phoenix, Arizona and in the 17.5T Short Course class it was X Factory driver Alex Krieg who laid down a dominating drive from second on the grid in the 7-minute A-main. Privateer Robert Molina (X Factory), came from 6th to lead laps three and four before he and Krieg switched places, running 1-2 for the last 11 laps of the race. Krieg slowly built a 6-second lead over Molina, who finished 3.5 seconds ahead of world-renowned race announcer Scotty Ernst (Team Associated) in third.
Source: X Factory [xfactoryrc.com]
