The opening round of the 2018/19 Rug Racers series was held last weekend. The new series returned with a few changes made to the track in an effort to help with the racing and limit the number of car breakages. The 13.5 Blinky Touring win was taken by long serving Ashley Wiffen. Ashley was being pushed hard by Jamie Hickin but was able to hold him off for the overall A-final win from Jamie Hickin in 2nd and Shaun Batt in 3rd.
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Xray have announced the addition of Danish top driver, Kevin Nielsen to their factory team. The multi-time ETS and DHI Cup A-finalist will campaign Xray’s T4 platform at national and international events such as the ETS, DHI Cup, XRS and more and he had the following to say about the deal:
I’m extremely happy and proud to join the Xray factory team. Thanks to Xray for putting the trust in me. My dream just came true. The quality of the products is just amazing, and the cars are on point like the support no matter what level you race at. I will as always try my best to get some great results both in nationals and internationals races.
Source: Xray [teamxray.com]
The final round of 2018 Czech Open Series was held last weekend at the popular Horni Jeleni track. Max Gotzl showed a fast pace from the get to, taking a double TQ in the Nitro and Electric 1/8th Buggy classes. In Nitro Tomas Kapicka and Jiri Mara came in 2nd and 3rd respectively, in E-Buggy it was Vaclav Broz in 2nd and Petr Tomasek in 3rd. After a straight forward win in his semifinal Max Gotzl (Xray) would also take the pole position for the Nitro A-main and right from the start the young man opened a gap on the field that he would be able to manage until the end to take his first overall victory of the weekend. Jiri Benes (Xray) came in 2nd while Tomas Kapicka (Kyosho) rounded out the top 3.
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The opening round of the Middle Swedish Indoor Cup was held in Örebro last weekend. In the Touring 13.5T class it was Daniel Carlsson who set the pace in the qualifiers. Local ace Rasmus Karlsson, who showed an incredibly fast on his home track, was 2nd on the grid and lining up 3rd was Per Lindqvist. In the finals Daniel Carlsson (Team Associated) took advantage of his TQ and would win all A-main legs to take the day’s win. Rasmus Karlsson (Schumacher), who had bad luck in the opening final, managed to keep his head down in the the remaining legs to secure the overall runner-up spot in front of the very talented buggy ace Elias Johansson (Team Associated), who had his touring car debut this weekend.
Thanks to Daniel Carlsson for the report.
Carrying forward their form from the opening round of the OneTen Series presented by Infinity yesterday, top qualifiers Akio Sobue and Jan Ratheisky have won their respective Sweep Modified and Scorpion Stock A-mains. The single 8-minute final saw the grid completed with Lao Minhao winning the B-main to bump up to the A-main. In a rather dominant performance Sobue won his final by 6 seconds from Jan followed by a hard charging Jin Sawada. The German taking the tie break for the overall Shanghai standings due to his fastest lap in today’s final, having had equal results in both the overall result and qualifying across both days. Gary Huang and Rocket Zhang completed the top 5.
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The 2018 Australian Nationals was held at the Adelaide Raceway in South Australia, with over 150 entries racing on the beautifully prepared outdoor clay track in perfect sunny weather conditions. Racers came from all around the country to the first national title in Adelaide for over 20 years. Seven official classes were offered including 2WD and 4WD Modified, 2WD and 4WD 17.5, 2WD Junior 17.5, Stadium Truck and SCT. For 2018 a demo class of 13.5T 4WD was run, which will replace 4WD 17.5 in 2019. In 2WD Modified Chris Sturdy was the defending champ and he was too good for the rest of the field, taking out all four qualifiers for TQ and then winning A1 and A2 with his AE buggy to take his 6th National Title. Ray Munday (Team Associated) qualified 2nd and took A3 for 2nd overall, with Adelaide privateer (Team Associated) Jack McMillan driving impressively for 3rd overall after pushing Sturdy very hard in A1 and A2. Notably in this final, three drivers under 14 years old made the A-main – Lachlan Donnelly, Lachlan Munday and Jordan Isergin – with Donnelly finishing 4th, showing the junior racer program in Australia is paying dividends.
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The fourth round of the Catalan Championships was held this past weekend at the RC Santa Perpetua track. In the 1/8th Nitro Buggy class it was Alex Valls with the overall TQ from Pol Hernandez in 2nd and Dani Batlle on the 3rd spot. After the 45-minute A-main it was again Alex Valls on the top spot, leaving behind Aleix Montero in 2nd and Alex Fernandez in 3rd.
The Buggyland 5.0 race was held in Madrid, Spain over the weekend, attracting most of Europe’s front-running 1/8th off-road racers. In the Nitro Buggy class it was HB Racing’s David Ronnefalk with the overall TQ while the E-Buggy class was lead by Mugen’s Juan Carlos Canas. After the nitro semifinals it was Juan Carlos with the pole position for the 60-minute nitro buggy A-main and he would also lead for a good part of the race as he seemed able to counter any attacks of the hard charging David Ronnefalk. However Juan Carlos suffered a flameout and bad luck in the later stages of the main, meaning David was able to bring home the win a lap in front of Kyosho’s Elliott Boots while SWorkz’s Martin Wollanka took the final podium spot. Ricardo Berton and Joao Figueredo came in 4th and 5th and in front of Jörn Neumann and Juan Carlos Canas, who had to settle for 7th, some three laps short of the winner.
