The prestigious Winterchamps were held last weekend in Hohenems, Austria and it was Xray’s Nico Schmid who dominated the 2WD and 4WD Buggy classes. Aron Münster (Xray) would take the runner-up spot in 4WD from Yokomo’s Fabian Luca Widmer who rounded out the podium result.
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JConcepts have announced the 2018 edition of their popular Indoor National Series. Now in its eighth year and with over 7,500 entries and counting, the JConcepts Indoor National Series has become the race for racers to showcase their driving skills on a national level while testing themselves against some of the industry’s best drivers. At the core, the INS remains unchanged, but is devoted to raising the standard for 2018 in terms of series participation, factory driver representation, and professionalism. The distinct 5-race series takes on the seasonal format of Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall Nationals races that will be held at fixed locations while the final race will serve as the ‘End of year bash’ and series championship presentation. For 2018, the Stadium and SCT classes have been simplified. To help bring new life to the events, the truck classes will be formatted around the 13.5 motor. Now, with Stadium and SCT classes available in a new power package, racers have fresh classes to race alongside the already popular 13.5 4WD class. In addition, the success of the Independent classes on the Super Cup Championship Series has driven JC to add this offering on the National Series. The Independent class, limited to 40 entries per event, is quite simply a 17.5 buggy class for drivers without sponsorships. Full details and all dates can be found here.
Round four of the Xray Racing Series Poland was held in Lodz with close to a 100 drivers signed in for the event. The track laid out with EOS-style was super fast with a few jumps adding even more challenges. Young Xray driver Bartek Zalewski absolutely dominated the 4WD class that he ultimately TQ’d and won from teammate Jakub Luczak 2nd and Bartlomiej Kramza (Schumacher) 3rd.
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In what has come as a big shock, Yukijiro Umino has announced his departure from Japanese company Yokomo. Yukijiro, a top racer in his own right, is best known for his role as chief designer of the company’s touring car platform and for being Ronald Völker’s race engineer. One of the most successful partnerships in RC, the pair dominated the ETS for 5 seasons between 2010 and 2015, took numerous European, Reedy race and National titles and finally took a long awaited and well-deserved IFMAR World title back in 2016. Yukijiro has yet to announce his new destination but has released the following statement:
I wish to announce that after 22 great years with the company, from the 25th of January I will no longer be working for Yokomo. I want to give a big thank you to everyone at Team Yokomo, my co-workers, team and especially to Tom Yokobori for what has been an amazing opportunity. I also want to give a special thank you to Ronald Volker with whom I have worked so closely over the past 9 year and achieved so much together. And finally I want to thank my family for their support throughout this journey. I wish to let everyone know that, as I have always done, I will never stop challenging and never give up. See you all at the track soon.
The third round of the Arrowmax Asia Race Cup Malaysia attracted more than 50 entries for the three classes of Touring Boosted 13.5T, Touring Pro-Stock and Formula. The Pro-Stock 13.5T champion was about to be crowned at this round who would be awarded a ticket to the grand final that is held in Japan and hosted by the iconic Yatabe Arena. The fastest of the three classes was the Boosted 13.5T category and it was Wong KokWai who was able to show that he was willing to control the field with a 12.709s lap to be seeded the number 1 driver to head off the start of qualifying. While in the Pro-Stock 13.5T class it was returning racer Max Teo who has shown that he did not loose much in term of his speed, seeding himself as number 1 driver with a fastest lap of 13.781s, while in Formula, it was Sham Arop who was able to secure the number 1 seed.
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Trinity have announced the return of RC icon, Brian “The Dirtinator” Kinwald to their team. The 1993 and 1997 IFMAR 1/10th 2WD Buggy World Champion had his own series of Kinwald-branded high-performance motors “back in the days” and the cooperation may indicate the return of such. The move is linked to a possible switch from chassis sponsors Team Associated, with whom he achieved his first worlds title back in 1993, to TLR, the squad he achieved his second Worlds title with.
Source: Trinity [teamtrinity.com]
Hobbywing have announced the signing of Sweden’s Alexander Hagberg to their factory team. The former World and European Champion will use Hobbywing products in the 1/10th Touring and 1/12th on-road classes and his knowledge and skill is expected to further strengthen the already impressive Hobbywing factory team. The former long-time Team Orca driver has the following to say:
I am extremely pleased to announce that I am joining the international Hobbywing team for 2018! After taking note of the performance of the Hobbywing products in the last few years, mainly from some of my teammates, I can definitely say that I am both confident and excited to use the products myself! I hope that it will also help to strengthen our team work both for the Hobbywing and Xray team! See you at the race tracks!
Source: Hobbywing [hobbywing.com]
The second round of the Swiss Electric On-road Nationals was held at the MRCP Indoor Race Arena in Dagmersellen near Luzern. Classes run were Touring Modified, Touring ProStock, Formula and 1/12th Pan Car 10.5T Boosted. In the Touring ProStock class, a very strong Darco Meister (Tamiya) took the overall TQ after three very close qualifyings with Kerim Kahraman (Infinity) and Daniel Burgener (Schumacher) finishing in 2nd and 3rd respectively.
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