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December 8, 2012

Robert Batlle is World Champion

Robert Batlle is the 1:8 Offroad World Champion after the factory Mugen driver dominated what was a processional and uneventful one-hour final in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Starting the race from second on the grid Batlle took control of the race when pole sitter and early leader Ty Tessmann made a mistake allowing the Spaniard through from where he opened up a lead he would never relinquish to give Mugen their first win since 2004 and the first World title for Novarossi since 1990. Behind Batlle, Tessmann took the runners-up spot with HB team-mate Atsushi Hara third.

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December 8, 2012

Worlds Final grid complete, Boots out

The 12 drivers that will battle it out for the 14th 1:8 Offroad World Championship title this evening in Buenos Aires has been decided but despite being the most spectacular driver all week and the man to top qualifying Elliot Boots won’t be taking part. Boots retired his Novarossi powered Kyosho 6-minutes into the first Semi final with a steering servo failure in his MP9. Winner of the first Semi, pole position for the 1-hour race goes to Tessmann with Robert Battle who won the second Semi starting directly behind the Canadian.

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December 8, 2012

1/8 Finals Update

The final day of the 14th 1:8 Offroad World Championships has arrived and getting the day underway was the 1/8 Finals with the biggest news from the two 30-minute encounters being that defending World Champion Cody King, who ended up in the 1/8 B final after a disappointing qualifying in which he was only 38th, will progress to the 1/4 Finals. The Kyosho/Orion driver had a slow start to the race but worked his way to the front to eventually take the win ahead of the Serpent of pole position starter Billy Easton, Team Associated’s Neil Cragg and Durango’s Joern Neumann. Nuemann who bumped up from yesterday’s 1/16 final started the race 9th and took the lead on the second lap and led for the majority of the race but having one more stop than his rivals, refueling on 6-minutes, he dropped back into the final bump position. The same race saw the end of the event for 2006 World Champion Mark Pavidis who finished 5th.

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December 7, 2012

Steven Weiss wins Hong Kong SAREDC Race

The 15th Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Establishment Day Celebration Race was held at Hong Kong’s Jordan Valley Park recently. The weather forecast was set to be rainy during the race weekend and there were around 80 local drivers, as well as former World Champion Surikarn C. from Thailand, Derek Hung, Antonio Caroli from South Africa, Steven Weiss from Germany, Lobo Lo and E.J. Evans from the USA who took part in this race. There were three different TC classes and the spec tire was from Solaris. Saturday was the first day with 3 practice rounds and 2 qualification rounds and the track was dry and the traction was pretty good. Steven Weiss with his T.O.P. Racing Photon EX was the quickest in the last controlled practice round 6 seconds in front of Derek Hung. Steven led the first round of qualification, behind him was Derek Hung and EJ Evans however Steven lost 4 seconds in the last minute and Derek Hung won this round by a second in front of Steven with EJ in third. Steven won the second and last round of qualifying with the fastest run, 4 seconds behind him was EJ Evans with Derek in third. Rain on Sunday stopped the race and so T.O.P. driver Steven Weiss won the race with his TQ time from the day before. Derek Hung finished in second and T.O.P. Driver EJ Evans in third.

Source: T.O.P. [top-racing.jp]

December 6, 2012

Final qualifier cancelled, Boots is Top Qualifer

Kyosho’s Elliott Boots has claimed the honour of Top Qualifier for the 14th 1:8 Offroad World Championship after the much anticipated and talked about heavy rain arrived over night in Argentina forcing the cancellation of the sixth & final round of qualifying. Waking to a wet morning in Buenos Aires drivers made their way to the track in the hope that they may get to run today but shortly after 09:00 local time even more torrential rain along with thunder & lightning arrived leaving organisers little option but to cancel today’s racing.

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December 6, 2012

Mibosport Cup Rd3 report

The third of eight races of the 2012/13 Mibosport Cup presented by Yokomo attracted again over 100 drivers from 5 countries including some of Europe’s top drivers such as Martin Hudy, Zdenko Kunak, Dominic Vogl, René Trauner and Michal Orlowski. The Mibosport Cup organisation is Michal Bok and takes place in the same place as the ETS in January.The race was held in a variety of electric classes such as 2WD and 4WD buggy, Formula, Yokomo GT, Stock 17.5T and Modified TC. In the TC Modified class over 30 drivers fought for the victory and the battle for TQ was on between Martin Hudy, Zdenko Kunák and Patrick Gollner. TQ Martin about 0.07s before Zdenko. Big battle in final and Zdenko win, before Martin. Third place secure Patrick Gollner. Very good race in this category also for Dennis Fadtke and Igor Liptak.

Continue reading the report here

December 6, 2012

Sensational Boots produces another TQ run

Kyosho’s Elliot Boots backed up his TQ run from this morning’s Q3 with a blistering performance in the penultimate round of qualifying this evening at the 1:8 World Championships in Argentina to take Q5 by a massive 13 seconds from Team Associated’s Ryan Maifield with Mugen driver Davide Tortorici third fastest. The slowest TQ run of the five rounds due to the track having become very bumpy & unpredictable, the result puts the 19-year-old Brit top of the more qualification ranking scenario of counting 3 rounds from 5. Officially there is one round of qualifying still to run although the weather forecast for tomorrow could very well see no action in Buenos Aires with very heavy rain expected later tonight, although that said previous rain predictions earlier in the event were to prove wrong. Under normal circumstances 4 of 6 rounds count but to cover all eventualities race officials published both rankings with Robert Batlle provisional Top Qualifier from Boots.

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December 5, 2012

Surprise Q4 as Wheeler TQs round

The fourth round of qualifying threw up a surprise with Xray driver Josh Wheeler setting the pace ahead of the Kyosho of A-Main Hobbies team driver Dylan Rodriguez with Jared Tebo third fastest. Running in the 5th group of 12 which was the opening group of Q3 & 4, Wheeler benefited from the timing of his run with the second of today’s runs really taking a toll on the track. The former World Championship Finalist admitted he got lucky with track conditions but said having followed in the same direction with his set-up as Xray team-mate Martin Bayer his OS powered XB9 worked really well for the run. Running medium compound AKA iBeam tyres he said other than going for a longer rear arm he will leave everything else as is for the final run of the day.

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