Red RC » International

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.

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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.

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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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July 28, 2013

Groskamp wins 2013 1/8th European Championships

Jilles Groskamp has become the 2013 1/8th Track European Champion here in Halifax after a thrilling final saw him take the win after a race long battle with Brit Kyle Branson, Dario Balestri completed the podium. The finals day in Halifax began with a dry track, something that hadn’t happened many times during the week. Hot temperatures began the day but by the time the semi finals were out on track, it had cooled slightly. In the first semi final, Dario Balestri took a dominating win ahead of his Capricorn team mate Daniele Ielasi and Simon Kurzbuch’s Shepherd. Balestri finished on 78 laps in 1208.48 seconds with Ielasi on 77 laps in 1205.55 seconds with Kurzbuch just .91 seconds behind. Adrian Bertin took the final definite place with the new KM prototype car but Patrick Schafer would have to wait and see if he had made the final. The second semi final proved to be a much closer affair with Mark Green taking the win just .32 seconds ahead of the Shepherd of Groskamp. 3rd and 4th in the Semi A, to definitely book their place in the final, were Motonica’s Robin D’Hondt and Mugen’s Kyle Branson. A noticeable person missing from the final would be Robert Pietsch with the German taking his Novarossi powered Mugen to 8th position. Green’s run of 78 laps in 1201.95 seconds proved to be a whole 7 seconds faster than Dario’s winning time in the Semi B, putting Mark on pole for the 45 minute main final.

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July 27, 2013

Martin Bayer wins 2013 4wd Euros

The 1/10th EFRA European Electric Offroad Championships took place in Spain last week and Martin Bayer wrote this report. ‘Immediately following a successful week of 1/8 off-road racing, I traveled with my teammate Reno Savoya to Spain for the European Electric Off-road Championships. The race program started with the 2WD class. We were using a 2WD prototype buggy based on the XB4 1/10 4WD offroad buggy. The car felt very good, but the track proved difficult with many low traction areas. I worked diligently during my free time to continuously improve my set up. After qualifying was completed, I was sitting in 8th position. I was quite pleased with this result considering it was my first race using this prototype on clay.

Continue reading the report here