Red RC » Industry

February 23, 2015

MX Racing fuel name Joe Pillars as US team manager

During this week’s Dirt Nitro Challenge it was announced that Joe Pillars will become the US team manager for Thailand based MX Racing fuels. Still in the early stages of their program, they have already signed 3 top level drivers to their team, Jared Tebo, Ryan Cavalieri and Joern Neumann, the former being the top qualifier of the truggy class at this year’s event. Working on building up a larger US team over the course of the season, Joe will still retain his role as Kyosho and Team Orion US team manager. The fuel which will be distributed in the US by HPI and is expected to be released in the next 2 months with a focus on offroad with the MX Dirt fuel becoming available in 25% and 30% nitro and only in 4.5 litre cans.

January 12, 2015

Gahan named Horizon Hobby Surface Team manager

Kevin Gahan named Horizon Hobby Surface Team manager

Horizon Hobby have announced that Kevin Gahan has accepted the position of Horizon Hobby Surface Team manager. Kevin’s new role will include responsibility for the TLR/Horizon Hobby/Spektrum Surface Racing teams. In his new role, Kevin will manage team communications, team development as well as help support hundreds of drivers around the world. For over six years Kevin has been an important ambassador for Team Losi Racing within the RC racing community and now he will broaden his responsibilities to cover all surface racing at Horizon Hobby.

I am very excited to once again be a part of the TLR/Horizon team moving forward,” Gahan says. “We have a strong group of drivers that I am looking forward to working closely with the team throughout the racing season and for years to come.” – Kevin Gahan, TLR/Horizon Hobby Team Manager

Kevin will be instrumental in driving the race team into the future while being a great liaison with the R&D/Product Development group at Team Losi Racing and Spektrum. As the race team continues to grow and progress, Kevin will be the individual ensuring its success.

Source: Horizon Hobby [horizonhobby.com]

December 3, 2014

Job opportunity at Schumacher

Schumacher Racing, the British RC car manufacturer have the following job vacancy, based in Northampton, UK. The company is requiring an engineer to join their design and development team as design, development and race engineer. The responsibilities include the building and testing of prototype cars, inputting knowledge from racing into the design process as well as the 2D and 3D design of RC racing cars.

Click here to read the full job describtion

October 5, 2014

On the Grapevine – Sicily

On the Grapevine - Sicily

How was it allowed to happen that an entire industry was put at risk for 12 days. I mean the track for the 15th running of the 1:8 Offroad World Championship must have been the most written about bits of land to host an r/c race but no one raised the human risk associated by its proximity to Europe’s most active volcano!!! Had Mount Etna acted up it could have been the final nail in the coffin for 1:8 Offroad. Having said that the mass deaths caused by the rivers of molten lava would surely mean an amazing future for the sport as the highly qualified online RC experts would finally get the calling they so much deserve to fill all job vacancies. For all the negative pre-event press that was published and on which those online experts fed like piranhas the World Championships in Sicily from where i saw it was, as IFMAR events go, a decent meeting. Although not a good benchmark to be working off, the event was a huge improvement on Argentina two years earlier.

Continue reading On the Grapevine here

September 30, 2014

Stepping Out Of Stock

Contrary to what many of you will think, my inspiration for this column came not originally from me thinking about an R/C race, but about full-size racing. I was reading an article (and the subsequent comments beneath it!) recently, discussing whether top driver should be ‘forced’ to move up the racing ladder, or prevented from competing at certain levels based on their results. For those of the guys who race regularly with me at a track, you’ll all groan at the following – specifically this came about whilst I was watching NASCAR, where a number of the sports top drivers compete in their ‘second tier’ series too, primarily to promote sponsors or gain additional seat time or track knowledge. I realised there was a lot of synergies to R/C racing, with the same discussion flaring up seemingly every year about the state of “Stock” class racing.

Continue reading Oli’s column here

August 19, 2014

On the Grapevine – Sand am Main

Exactly one year ago I sat down with some enthusiasm to write this column because I had just returned from reporting on David Ronnefalk winning his first European Championship title. The reason writing about his success in my column came easier than normal was I could relate more easily to his achievement because we were both kind of the new kids on the block at the same time and I had witnessed everyone of his 1:8 European A Championship campaigns. The first Euros I reported on was a dusty Crete in 2008 while his was Austria one year later, the same year he won the European B Championships in Switzerland, and over that time we have developed a good working relationship so seeing him take the biggest win of his career felt that bit more special. Over the last 12-months I have got to work a lot more with David due to him representing Kyosho in the Euro Offroad Series and interacting with him at the European Championships in Germany last week it was compelling to see how the 18-year-old took his title defence in his stride. His form from the get-go was impressive but how he dealt with it was for me even more so.

Continue reading On the Grapevine here

August 11, 2014

The New Generation (Part III)

In my recent columns, I’ve looked at the ways new, younger people are influencing our hobby – both as drivers and as part of manufacturers or companies. However, there’s one section of the sport I’ve not yet covered. One that is pretty close to my heart and one that, perhaps out of all the columns I’ve written, I’ve got the most experience of – race organisation

Continue reading Oli’s column here

July 1, 2014

On the Grapevine – Luxembourg Hockenheim & Austin

On the Grapevine – Luxembourg, Hockenheim & Austin Some things need to be experienced in order to be truly appreciated. One of Formula 1′s most famous corners is Spa-Francorchamps’ Eau-rouge, which seeing it on television does no justice to the true gradient of this spectacular piece of Belgian race track. I have had the pleasure of travelling to Spa a number of times with work and each time I was taken a back by the scale of the climb cars make racing up Eau-rouge. My first trip there was with two drivers I was promoting, one of whom was racing there for the first time in a round of the European Formula Ford Championship. Like any driver making their first visit to a track and having clocked up hours learning it on the Playstation he wanted to check it out for real but at 7km long and it getting late walking it was not really an option. The next best thing was to borrow his team’s pit bike and together with his race engineer they set off for a sighting lap which while on a 50cc was never going to be quick would beat walking but it wasn’t long before they found themselves on foot. Half way up the famous corner the bike simply ran out of steam with both of them having to jump off – thats how steep it is. The reason for reminiscing is that this rather funny moment came back into my head when I travelled to Round 5 of the Euro Touring Series in Luxembourg.