Red RC » International

August 21, 2013

Hara tops opening FEMCA Qualifier

Atsushi Hara, who only last Friday made the shock announcement that he was leaving HB, has taken the opening round of qualifying at the FEMCA 1:8 Offroad Championships in China. Racing a Mugen, which the former World Champion went out and bought himself in a hobby shop in Thailand, the Japanese ace set the pace in the first of six 10-minute runs by just over 5-seconds from Korea’s Dani Choi and with Japanese Kyosho driver Dani Hiroki completing the Top 3 at Beijing Model Sports Association’s freshly built FT Offroad track. With a difficult Visa procedure keeping defending Champion Kyle McBride away from contesting this year’s FEMCA Championship, the Far East’s equivalent of the EFRA European Championships, and thereby denying the Australian the opportunity to go for a third consecutive title, Hara’s TQ run endorses his status as pre-event favourite to take back the title he previously held.

View our complete event coverage here.

August 19, 2013

Alex Thurston is 200mm Junior European champion

At last weekend’s 1/10th 200mm ‘A’ Euros in Austria Serpent driver Alex Thurston took the Junior Championship. After taking the 1/8th on-road Euro Junior title just weeks ago in Halifax, UK this is another important victory for the young man this year. Alex is sidelined by Serpent team mate Jörg Tiit who took the third place on the Junior’s podium.

Source: Serpent [serpent.com]

August 18, 2013

Alessio Mazzeo is 1/10th European Champion

The 1/10th 200mm ‘A’ Euros were held this weekend at the Stohr Ring near Kirchberg in Austria with 89 drivers in attendance. Practice would take place under changeable weather conditions with heavy rain stopping running a number of times but qualifying and the finals were all run under sunny dry conditions. Qualifying would go the way of newly crowned 1/8th European Champion Jilles Groskamp with his Shepherd, narrowly beating out Eric Dankel (Capricorn) with Dominic Greiner (Serpent), Toni Gruber (Serpent), Dario Balestri (KM) and Alessio Mazzeo (Serpent) completing the top 6, separated by only 1 second.

Continue reading the report here

August 16, 2013

Atsushi Hara leaves HPI/HB Racing

Atsushi Hara leaves HB/HPI Racing

Two-time World Champion Atsushi Hara has announced that he has left long time main sponsor HPI/HB Racing following 13 years with the team. Widely regarded by many as the best all round driver in the history of the sport, the 2 world titles in both touring car (2000) and 1/8th offroad (2008) are just the highlights of a very successful career which has included countless podiums in all the major classes both onroad & offroad at World, International and National level. The decision to part company with HPI was mutual and for now the Japanese ace has yet to make any decision on a replacement chassis sponsor. We chatted with Atsushi some weeks back, when he flew to Slovakia for the ETS Finale, and he hinted back then that something was about to change.

Read Hara’s full statement here (in English & Japanese)

August 7, 2013

JQ wins 2013 Nordic Championships

The annual 1/8th off-road Nordic Championships were held in sunny and hot Finland. This year the race was more international than normal with drivers from Finland and Sweden, but also Estonia, France, Italy and Germany. The race was incredibly close, with the fastest drivers being Joseph Quagraine, Ari Heinonen and Teemu Leino. In qualifying all but one round was decided with mere tenths of a second, often with all three drivers separated with less than 1 second after the 5 minute qualifying rounds. In the end Joseph Quagraine managed to TQ from Ari in 2nd and Teemu in 3rd. Throughout qualifying the top Swedish drivers, Christoffer Svensson and Andreas Edvinsson found their speed, and were looking stronger for the mains.

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August 6, 2013

Michael Orlowski wins Junior European TC title

On last weekend‘s EFRA European Electric Touring Car championship Team Durango’s Michael Orlowski won the Junior European title by finishing 7th in the B final. The young Polish driver, who also is a successful competitor in the Euro Offroad Series, used a prototype of Team Durango’s forthcoming DETC410 touring car as did Michal’s team mate Elliott Harper who finished third overall.

Source: Durango [team-durango.com]

August 5, 2013

Ronald Volker claims 2013 European TC title

The EFRA 1/10th scale touring car European Championships was held this week in Portugal attracting 60 drivers. Qualifying started and it all looked familiar at the top with Yokomo driver Ronald Volker dominating the first two Heats as he TQ’d both, but on Saturday morning Alexander Hagberg showed that somehow Team Xray has found the way to reduce the gap from Ronald’s pace and took the 3rd round. Now all was to be decided until the last round, since Hagberg had the best 21 Laps time. In the end Ronald didn’t fail and TQ’d the last 2 heats and was declared the TQ of the race. Looking at the timesheets, the expectation for some very tight racing in the finals surrounded the pits.

Continue reading the report here

July 31, 2013

Carsten Keller wins EFRA GP in Bischofsheim

The well-known Rhein-Main-Circuit in Bischofsheim played host for the German EFRA 1/8th nitro buggy GP. The race was set as a pre-warm-up for the club and the German RC car association as the track will be the place of next year’s EFRA European Championship. Just before the meeting the track received some make-overs here and there in the form of a new pit exit and some updated curbs but overall the Rhein-Main-Circuit was well known for most of the driver that came from all over Europe including Finland, the UK, Switzerland, Austria and of course Germany. Friday was set a the practice day and most of the drivers made good use of the chance to adopt their cars, engines and tyres to the scorching hot temperatures. Saturday saw the qualifiers and at the end it was JQ Products’ own Joseph Quagraine who took TQ in front of Kyosho’s Martin Hansen who had Simon Esser (Xray) and Carsten Keller (Kyosho) in tow.

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