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May 3, 2025

Kilic takes final qualifier at Philippine Masters

Burak Kilic has taken the fourth & final round of qualifying at the Philippines Masters, the Mugen Seiki/Nova Engines driver finally ending Davide Ongaro’s reign at Asia’s biggest annual 1:8 Offroad race. While yesterday threatened the possibility of rain, the record entry of drivers from 21 countries arrived Saturday morning to a dry & very hot track for one last qualifying effort and it would prove to be the fastest and most exciting of the four. With Ongaro having already secured the overall TQ in the penultimate round yesterday, an early mistake from the World Champion gave his rivals the chance to go the top with Infinity’s Kouki Kato topping the timing screens and looking like he might finally deliver on the outright speed he has shown over the last two days. It wasn’t to be however as he had a bobble on his sixth lap of 9. This promoted Mayako’s Pekko Iivonan to the top of the timing screens but a bad lap dropped him off the top spot before a bobble on the last lap ended the prospect of a TQ run. Having lost over two & a half seconds in the first half of the heat with a bobble, bobble the word of Q4, a recovering Kilic took over from Iivonan and laying down the fastest lap managed to get the TQ by half a second over Ongaro with Ryan Lutz only a further 4/10ths back after putting in his best run of the 4. With Ongaro and Kilic the only two drivers to make 9-laps yesterday, today the Top 6 all broke that barrier. Overall the result means Kilic starts directly behind Ongaro for tomorrow’s 1-hour Main with Kato lining up P3 ahead of his Infinity team-mate Naoto Matsukura, Lutz and the Sworkz of Mattio Polito.

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May 2, 2025

Ongaro is Philippine Masters Top Qualifier

Team Associated’s Davide Ongaro will go for a third consecutive win at the Philippine Masters as the Top Qualifier, his main rival in Manila Burak Kilic unable to force the battle for the overall TQ to go to tomorrow’s final qualifier. Originally two qualifiers were scheduled to make up Friday’s timetable but with a chance of rain effecting the rest of the weekend, race control pushed through with getting a third round in the books. With Ongaro having taken the opening 2 qualifiers, Kilic had to deliver a TQ run having come close in the previous round, but it wasn’t to be. The Mugen Seiki would get caught out on his penultimate lap by light rain that started as the third round concluded. Going off the track, Kilic would retire to the pits as Ongaro took the round ahead of Infinity pairing Kouki Kato and Naoto Matsukura. Behind them, despite a mistake, Ryan Lutz maintained his run of Top 5 times taking his Kyosho to the fourth fastest time ahead of Team Associated’s Alex Bernadzik and last year’s podium finisher Atsushi Hara. With the TQ settled the focus of Q4 will be on the battle for second between Asian Buggy Championship debutant Kilic and last year’s season finale winner Kouki.

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May 2, 2025

Kilic closer but another TQ run for Ongaro

While a repeat of the opening qualifier result, Q2 at the Philippine Masters saw Mugen Seiki’s Burak Kilic get a lot closer to Team Associated’s Davide Ongaro. With a 1-second buffer over the Manila race first timer in Q1, the defending back to back winner of Asia’s biggest annual 1:8 Offroad race had just 4/10ths in hand over Kilic in the second round, the later saying afterwards traffic had cost him a the chance of the TQ. Summing up his run Ongaro reported the wind was causing him some issues but added ‘wind is part of the game and you can do nothing. For the rest (of the run) it was good’. On his performance Kilic said, ‘It was really good but just held me up from making the TQ. I mean it was the same for Davide he also had many traffic but we made a good race’. While the original schedule for Friday’s action was just two qualifiers, the event famous driver’s banquet taking place this evening in the capital city, the threat of rain tomorrow means drivers will go at it one more time today with a third round of qualifying. While up front things looked, again the Top 2 the only drivers to cover 9-laps, the second round produced some notable improvements from Naoto Matsukra and Pekko Iivonan who posted the 3rd and 4th fastest times ahead of Ryan Lutz. Having had a Top 3 in Q1, Sworkz diver Mattia Polito could only manage P7, the Italian reporting he had a complete lack of traction this time round.

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May 2, 2025

Ongaro from Kilic as qualifying gets underway in Manila

With qualifying getting underway at the Philippine Masters in Manila this morning, it was Team Associated’s Davide Ongaro who topped the first of the 4 scheduled qualifiers from Mugen Seiki’s Burak Kilic. Having topped yesterday’s seeding from Infinity’s Kouki Kato, Ongaro completed 9-laps of the Circulo Verde Track over the 5-minute qualifier with Kilic, the only other drive to make 9-laps, just 1-second off. It was to be a frustrating start to qualifying for Kato as he crashed on his opening lap and needed to be marshal. Losing 4-seconds, the fired up Japanese driver would go on to set the fastest lap by an impressive margin as he recovered to salvage a P5. Making it an all European based Top 3, Italy’s Mattia Polito managed to go ahead of Kyosho’s Ryan Lutz on the final lap. Seeded No.8, the American lost 3/10ths of a second to the Sworkz driver on their 8th lap giving Polito 3rd for the round by just 0.048. Behind them reigning Asian Buggy Championships Champion Christian Wolhuter completed the Top 6, this weekend’s second round of the Cayote backed championship the Australian Sworkz driver’s first outing of the season.

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May 1, 2025

Kilic fastest in SP2, Kato maintains top seed status

He said after SP1 he felt his car would be faster for the second seeding round at the Philippine Masters and that turned out to be the case as Burak Kilic took his Nova Engines powered Mugen Seiki to the fastest 2-consecutive laps. Going one better than he did in the morning’s opening round, Kilic’s time however would not better than that set by Kouki Kato, that time still more than 2/10ths of a second faster around the technical track where currently 36.8-seconds are the benchmark lap times. Behind Kilic, Team Associated’s Alex Bernadzik set the second fastest time with an improvement of 5/10ths on his SP1 effort. Almost half a second off his morning time, something he put down down his tyre prep, Kato would complete the Top 3 ahead of his Infinity team-mate Naoto Matsukura who was much happier with his latest effort. Fifth fastest in SP1, Sworkz’ Mattia Polito again rounded out the Top 5 of the high qualify field ahead of the race’s defending champion Davide Ongaro.

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May 1, 2025

Kato sets early pace at Philippine Masters

Infinity’s Kouki Kato has set the pace in the opening round of seeding practice at the Philippine Masters, the Japanese driver fastest by a decent margin over 2-consecutive laps of this year’s more technical Manila track layout. The second round of the Cayote backed Asian Buggy Championships, Kato was the winner of last season’s championship finale in Indonesia but this weekend marks his first trip to the legendary Philippines race and it was another of the race’s first timers, Mugen Seiki’s Burak Kilic, who was his closest rival 7/10ths of a second back with the rest of the Top 5 covered by just 2/10ths. The first of the three seeding rounds that make up Thursday schedule would see Team Associated’s reigning World Champion Davide Ongaro complete the Top 3 ahead of team-mate Alex Bernadzik with Italy’s Mattia Polito fifth as the leading Sworkz driver.

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April 28, 2025

Fuller hits the big time with clean sweep at Silver State

Sworkz’s Mason Fuller hit the big time as he completed a clean sweep at the 2025 Silver State Indoor Championships, the young American talent taking his first major win in style to come away from the Las Vegas event with four winners trophies. With latest edition of the Joey Christensen event attracting just over 700 entries, qualifying saw Muller lay down his intentions as he took two of the three qualifiers to secure the TQ for the blue ribbon Nitro Buggy final. Behind him, team-mate Juan Carlos Canas was fastest in Q2 to secure the P2 starting position for the defence of the title the Spaniard won last year. Kyosho’s young talent Phi-Long Nguyen qualified P3 ahead of Tekno’s Dirt Nitro Challenging winning duo Seth VanDalen and Ryan Maifield. In the final, having already taken the wins in Nitro Truggy, Electric Truggy, and eBuggy, Muller delivered the big one to win the 45-minute encounter by 23-seconds from Canas. FEMCA Champion Nguyen took the final step on the podium ahead of Team Associated pairing Spencer Rivkin and Brandon Rose.

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March 23, 2025

Edmunds earns biggest career win at Asian Buggy Championships opener

Mayako Youth Mentoring Program driver Jayden Edmunds earned the biggest win of his career today with victory in New Zealand following an exciting season opener to the Cayote backed Asian Buggy Championships. With the Counties RC Car Club track hosting the first of the four encounters that make up the third season of the 1:8 Offroad Championship, Edmunds sent the first hint of his potential when he topped the second round of qualifying before the highly experienced Kyle McBride hit his stride to take the final two qualifiers and the overall TQ. Lining up P3 for the 45-minute final behind Sworkz’s Jayden Jamieson, after plenty of shuffling for position at the start, four different leaders in the opening four minutes, Edmunds would settle into serious contention when he took the lead from HB Racing’s Logan Toia on lap 33. With McBride and Toia, who had three stints at leading, both suffering multiple flameouts ending their challenges, Edmunds would find himself under attack from fellow countryman Caleb Noble. With a very fast car, his Tekno posting the fastest lap of the race, Noble went to the front with a nice pass coming onto the main straight however as both drivers made their final pit stops, Noble pitting a lap earlier, Edmunds’ stop helped him to retake the lead. Again Caleb appeared quicker but Edmunds played it cool. As they came around to start their final lap, a mistake by Noble gave Edmunds the breathing room he needed to secure a very popular first international race win. Finishing 6-seconds back, Top Seed Noble was clearly unhappy with his second place. Opening the event strongly with a TQ in the opening qualifier, before starting to feel under the weather on Saturday, Jamieson was happy to survive to finish P3 and claim the Kiwi’s first Asian Buggy Championships podium finish in Nitro Buggy. Just 3.6-seconds back, the WIRC of eBuggy podium finisher and local racer Kasey Dawson capped off an impressive weekend with fourth while Dylan Toia completed the Top 5.

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