Revelation Raceway hosted round 4 of the Top Notch Tour this past weekend with the event attracting nearly 80 entries. In the Pro Buggy class Mugen’s Adam Drake set the pace in both rounds of qualifying and started first in the 30-minute final. Drake went on to win the 30-minute final followed by the HB Racing duo of Tyler Brown and Chad Grana.
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Round 7 of the FORCE Series was held at River Rat RC Raceway. In 1/8 Pro Nitro Buggy Mitch Zeck was able to take TQ in round 1 and take a 3rd in Q2 which gave him the overall TQ. In the 35 minute A-main, Gene Hickerson took the early lead and started to check out. Zeck worked his way up from last to 3rd before having a receiver pack fail, causing a DNF. A great battle ensued between Hickerson, Jordan Singletary, and Julien Oliveras for the next 25 minutes. With five minutes to go, Hickerson got stuck on a pipe and flamed out, handing a 1-lap lead to Oliveras who went on to win. Hickerson rejoined in 4th but quickly worked his way back up to finish 2nd by just 0.07 seconds over Singletary in a very exciting photo finish.
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Round 2 of the British LMP National series took place at Birtley, just outside of Newcastle in the North East of England. Racing took place over two days, with Saturday seeing all drivers competing in the 13.5 fixed timings class. Sunday saw drivers split into 6.5, fixed timing, Modified and 13.5, fixed timing, Sports Modified. The Birtley team laid out a very challenging high-speed track, with a very narrow racing line and limited grip. Most drivers struggled to find a set-up that carried speed whilst also having the stability needed for the high speed direction changes.
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Ryan Maifield came to the 1:10 Offroad World Championships in Xiamen, China, empty handed in terms of the sport’s biggest prize. Declaring early on he was not a fan of the track, 7 days on the Yokomo driver leaves as a double World Champion becoming only the fourth driver in the 17 runnings of the championship to do so. Having claimed his first ever World title when he wrapped up the 2WD title in A2, the deciding of the 4WD title would go down to the wire with A3 throwing up one of the craziest World finals ever with Maifield himself admitting he didn’t really remember what happened. In the end, it was hard to follow the chaos of which car was flying off where, it was his protege Spencer Rivkin who would win the decider from 5th on the grid as Maifield got by Tessmann on the final lap. The third of the title contenders going into A3, David Ronnefalk would lead from after the first lap, staying there for 2-laps until a mistake. With further mistakes ending his chances of a first EP World title, he opted to pull up for the final two laps and watch the thrilling finish, his win in A2 & 3rd in the opener enough to secure second overall. With his surprise A3 win, Rikvin snatched the final step of the podium on tie break leaving Top Qualifier Tessmann with fourth, with Xray team-mate & outgoing champion Bruno Coelho ending up 9th despite lining up 3rd for his title defence.
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The final round of the 2017 South-African ORE 1/12th national championship series was held at the Welkom RC Arena over weekend this past weekend. With the new track build for the IFMAR 2018 worlds on track, this was the last official event to be hosted at the current indoor facility. To make the weekend more special, the 1/12th Nationals was combined with a Nandos Challenge in the style of a Reedy Format racing for Touring Modified and Pro-Stock class. The 1/12th Modified qualifying rounds showed great racing by the Xray team mates Shaun Schutte, Antonio Caroli and Hein Kotze and it was Antonio who managed to take the TQ honours followed by Shaun Schutte and Hein Kotze for the grid.
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The final round of the Belgian SCT Cup was held at the indoor astro turf track of the Black Country Arena. For 2017 the track has been completely revamped as the new owner not only redid the track layout, but also relocated the driver stand. The new track offers a moderate grip astro surface with “stop and go” hairpins, a high steep corner, a funny winding section on painted concrete and a wooden table jump. In Pro2 qualifying, Géry Ledocq (Kyosho) took the TQ, and made a step towards the Pro2 national title, by winning the first two heats in front of Nicolas Evens (TLR) with these two drivers being the only ones achieving 15 laps. Having secured the pole position, Gery decides not to run the last heat, which was topped by Nicolas in front of Tom Vercarre (TLR) and an impressive Guillaume Laffut (TeamC) who confirmed his good performance of the second heat, where he already finished 3rd. The second place of Tom in this heat allowed him to qualify 8th overall after two heats tainted with mechanical issues. His contender for the 3rd place in the championship, Stéphane Lecomte (Team Associated) would start from the 4th spot, having also experienced some problems of his own.
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This past weekend was the debut of the Boronia Spring Bash in Melbourne, Australia. The event was conceived only recently to cater for popular alternative racing classes. The weather was definitely summer hot but rain and a late thunderstorm changed plans for the practice and qualifying days. However Sunday was only sunshine and heat for the finals. In the VTA class, Brian Stewart (Race Opt) eventually claimed the TQ but made costly early mistakes in A1 and A2 to the benefit of Scott Rawlings (Yokomo) with Brett Marshall (Awesomatix) in third.
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The outdoor season ending Portuguese Cup was held at the Travessas track in S. João da Madeira located in the south of Porto. In the 1/8th Nitro On-road class it was José Areias with the win after some 45 minutes of intense racing. Vasco Sousa would follow on a hard-fought 2nd place while Joaquim Rego had to settle for 3rd overall.
Source: Shepherd [team-shepherd.com]
