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April 5, 2019

ETS Spain Day 1 rained out

It should have been the official start of the outdoor season of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series this morning in Spain but the weather has meant otherwise. After a day of dry free practice yesterday at the Asoger track, Round 3 of the Championship was officially set to get underway today with controlled practice and the opening round of qualifying, however rain put pay to anyone hitting the track today as racers woke up to a gloomy cloudy day in Madrid. First making the call to wait until 14:00 local time to decide whether any racing could take place, heavy lunchtime rain forced the call that the day would be cancelled. With weather not looking much better for tomorrow, the current call is that each driver’s fastest three consecutive laps will determine the heat order as they go directly into qualifying if the weather plays its part. Based on Thursday’s times, drivers managing 6 rounds of practice, it was Ronald Volker who was fastest from Bruno Coelho with Freddy Sudhoff third. Last year’s winner Alexander Hagberg found himself down in 11th. In Pro Stock it was joint championship leaders Simon Lauter and Max Machler who set the pace ahead of Olivier Bultynck, Christian Donath and Dominic Vogl. In Formula Jitse Miedema was quickest from Lauter and Jeremy Limoges.

April 4, 2019

Outdoor season gets underway with ETS Spain

The European outdoor season gets underway this weekend as Spain plays host to the third round of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series. With the 12th season of the ETS producing two different winners on carpet in Austria and Germany, Round 3 will makes the change to asphalt with most drivers making no secret to the fact that this is there preferred surface to race on. The third year the championship has travelled to the Asoger RC track near Madrid, the two previous visits have seen it be a happy hunting ground for Xray. Reigning champion Bruno Coelho took the TQ and victory over Marc Rheinard in 2017 and last year team-mate Alexander Hagberg ended a 4-year ETS winning drought with the win over Yokomo’s Christopher Krapp. While unwanted weather conditions forecast for the weekend could influence the weekend’s action, all the teams will be looking to conclude the first half of the season with what is viewed as an important win given the rest of the championship will be played out on asphalt.

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April 4, 2019

Euro Contest X – Announcement

The Euro Contest X, the 10th edition of the popular 1/8th off-road race, will be hosted by the OSPY Team club from the 21st to 23rd of June in Gussago in Northern Italy. The 2019 race will see Nitro Pro, Open and E-Buggy classes with last year’s event drawing 300 entries. Full information, sign-up and more can be found on the official event website here.

April 1, 2019

Sobue takes Rd8 victory while Rheinard wins PYC event

Akio Sobue has won the final round of the OneTen series from his team mate, and overall PYC Hong Kong modified class event winner, Marc Rheinard. It was very close between the Infinity drivers during qualifying but in the final, after an untidy first lap, Sobue was able to take a clear win ahead of his German team mate. Nicholas Lee found pace just in time for the final and took 3rd with Gary Huang and Naoki Akiyama completing the top half of the field. Akio summed up his race by saying ‘now good, perfect’ referring to the traction returning in time for the 8-minute final and his car being very good again. Explaining his race he said, ‘the first lap the car was strange, then good after’ and once in a clear lead he drove safely to conserve both his tires and batteries. Having had a difficult day yesterday, only finishing in 5th, combined with today’s victory he ended up 3rd in the combined event standings.

Continue reading this report here or view our complete event coverage here.

April 1, 2019

IFMAR 1/10th Off-road Worlds Warm-up – Announcement

The Hudy Racing Arena, host of the 2019 IFMAR 1/10th Electric Off-road World Championships will hold a warm-up race on the weekend of the 26th of May. Hold in 2WD and 4WD Buggy classes the race will allow a first taste of the conditions at the indoor dirt track and sign-up is already available here.

April 1, 2019

Alexander Hagberg takes 6th EFRA 1/12th title

The 2019 edition of the EFRA 1/12 scale European Championships was held at the world famous Hudy Arena, in Trencin, Slovakia this past weekend. The race saw a strong field of more than 100 drivers from 15 different countries. Championship crowns were up for grabs in two classes – 6.5T Modified, and 13.5T Blinky Stock. The race was held over three days and practice started on Friday, and the track soon started to come in, with decent traction levels already. Alexander Hagberg was setting the early pace in Modified, and Michal Orlowski as well as Ollie Payne seemed to be the two strong forces in the Stock class in practice. As qualifying started, Alexander didn’t have a big advantage in pace anymore, as the first three rounds of qualifying were won by Jorn Neumann. Michal Orlowski also showed a strong early pace. After some setup changes and tuning of tire preparation and size, Hagberg was back on pace to take qualifier 4 and 5. The last round was a real thriller as it came down to just a few thousand of a second on the tie breaker, which eventually played in Alexander’s favor, to award him the TQ spot.

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March 31, 2019

Akio Sobue snatches Rd8 TQ in final qualifier

Akio Sobue is top qualifier for the final round of the 2018/19 OneTen series presented by Infinity at PYC in Hong Kong, the Japanese Infinity driver gambling big earlier in the day only for it to pay off in the last two heats. The only other person that could go for the pole position, Marc Rheinard could only take 2nd for the round, 9 tenths back, and will start right behind Sobue in this afternoon’s single 8-minute A-main. Jin Sawada makes it an all Infinity IF14 top 3, with Serpent driver Naoki Akiyama having a much better Sunday and he will start from 4th on the grid, just ahead of top Hong Kong driver Kenrick Fong. Speaking to Akio following the race he said ‘big gamble’ referring to his saving tires in this morning’s first two rounds of qualifying. Using his tires from Q3 in Q4 he said the car was really good on used tires, while according to those that ran new tires in the final round, they were difficult to drive at the start with little feeling. For the final, like all the other front runners, he will run his remaining set of new tires.

Continue reading this report here or view our complete event coverage here.

March 31, 2019

Rheinard again in Q2

The second round of qualifying for today’s eighth and final round of the OneTen series has gone once again to Marc Rheinard, the Infinity driver playing the tire strategy perfectly to all but seal the TQ, 2 qualifying rounds from 4 to count. Jin Sawada took 2nd, the Infinity pairing both running one run tires as Sobue continued to run old tires, gambling on the last two rounds to have a shot at pole position. It was a better run for the Yokomo team as both Meen Vejrak and Nicholas Lee bolted on fresh tires to claim 3rd and 4th respectively with Xray’s Gary Huang taking 5th. Marc said ‘it felt ok, the first lap was not so fast but from the 2nd lap it was ok’. Using the same tires that he ran for the opening qualifier, the German noted that ‘the drop off is not too big, I just had two bad laps where I went into the dust. For the remaining 2 rounds, he will work with his Infinity team mates regarding when to use their new tires to claim the best possible starting spots for the final.

Continue reading this report here or view our complete event coverage here.