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Our friends Oople, who are over in the Japan, have produced this video showing a lap of the track where the 2007 1/10th Scale IFMAR World Championships are underway. Currently after four rounds of qualifying it is Japanese driver Masami Hirosaka that holds the TQ with one round of qualifying to run.
Source: Oople [oople.com]
Following on from their announcement last week that they would re-enter off road racing again Serpent have anounced top American racer Billy Easton will join their R&D and race team. Easton joins fellow American Jeff Cuffs and young German Jörn Neumann will each play a big role in the Dutch companies future plans.
Read full Serpent release on Easton signing… content
Serpent have an interesting story on their site about Champ Car star and soon to be Formula One driver Sebastien Bourdais who tried out one of their F180 formula cars yesterday (Thursday) at Assen where he and his Newman Haas Lanigan Team are preparing for this weekend’s second European Champ Car World Series encounters. The reigning Champ Car Champion drove one of three F180s brought by Serpent to the 1:1 track which is situated in the north of Holland. While light rain made the temporary r/c track, which was situated right in front of the Newman Haas Lanigan Team pitbox, tricky Bourdais proved to be a natural at the controls as he and his Crew Chief Pedro raced one another. Both were impressed with the handling and speed of the 1:8 scale car as well as the strenght of the parts as they made contact on a number of occassions!!
Last weekend saw the Korean Electric touring car Nationals run at the tight and twisty GF Raceway track and the event attracted some International drivers who joined the large amount of locals to battle for the National title. In the Modified class qualifying, it was former World Champion and Hot Bodies racer Atsushi Hara from Japan that took the top qualifying spot ahead of Serpent S400 pairing of Nam Sangjoon and Dutch racer Niels Koenekoop in 2nd and 3rd respectively. In the race it was again Hara that proved his top billing by easily taking the event win ahead of Koenekoop in 2nd, who managed to leap frog his team mate Nam who finished in 3rd giving the new S400 its first International podium result.
Full results to follow.
Click here to see a video from Atsushi Hara in practice… content
This weekend has seen the European 1/8th scale Championships for drivers aged 40 and over, run at the AMC Hildesheim track in Germany, alongside the European 1/10th 235mm Championship. In the 1/8th scale class qualifying it was French Kyosho driver Eric Nougier that took the pole position from Serpent driver Karl Heinz Meister in 2nd, while in the 235mm class it was Belgian racer Eric D’hondt that claimed the top qualifying spot ahead of current European title holder Alain Levy in 2nd. The 1/8th scale race saw an easy win for the French driver, after Meister claimed the lead after 10 minutes and then immediately went out with a rear belt failure allowing Nougier back in front and able to pull out a 2 lap cushion ahead of eventual 2nd placed finisher Christoph Pietsch with Austrian driver Peter Grandinger claiming 3rd spot at the end of the 45 minute race. In the 235mm final a problem for pole man D’hondt saw him sidelined after only 7 minutes which made it easier for Glyn Beal from the UK to work his way to the front where he eventually finished, despite the German racer Jens Stark in 2nd keeping him honest for the entire race, local driver Thomas Plöger rounded out the podium in 3rd.
Click here to see the final results… content
For those of you who have been following our extensive race coverage from the 2007 1/10th scale 200mm European Championships you will already know that Dario Balestri has been crowned the 2007 European Champion. Winning his second straight Championships in Madrid, Spain, the Italian endured a tough race day having qualified down in the 1/4 finals, he won that final for a place in the semi, which he also won, to line up 5th for the 45 minute A-Final. After some great driving and having some luck come his way, the Team Magic driver crossed the line in 1st place to claim the 2007 crown. A fast charging Jilles Groskamp from Holland was 2nd for Xray while young Italian European ‘B’ Champion Alessio Mazzeo was 3rd for Serpent.
Our trackside reporter Oisin O’Briain will have a full report online tonight.
View our coverage from the event here or take a look at our championship gallery here.
Our partners Neo Buggy have been covering the Norwegian EFRA GP held this weekend in Skien that saw HoBao racer Joesph Quagraine take the TQ in qualifying. On finals day the rain came and put a bit of a dampener on the day but pole man Quagraine picked up where he left off at the end of qualifying and took the lead from the start up until 20 minutes in when he crashed onto his roof. A confused turn marshall stopped his cars engine, thinking something was wrong, ending the hopes of a win for the Finnish driver. Chris Svensson took over the lead from Quagraine up until 4 minutes from the end when his driveshaft broke taking him out on the spot, but he came home 4th anyway. This allowed local Norwegian driver Ronny Arnesen into the lead where he could control the rest of the race and take the win from Frode Skauen in 2nd and Steffen Culmsee in 3rd.
Click her to see the final results… content
Next Monday sees the start of the 5th running of the 1/10th scale 200mm EFRA European Championships, and this year the event will take place on the ARCA circuit in Madrid, Spain. Red RC will be present trackside with our reporter Oisin O’Briain to cover the event and we hope to bring you muliple daily reports as well news and photographs from the race. We have created a dedicated area for this, and other upcoming events we will be attending, and that events section can be accessed a number of ways – by clicking the events tab above, clicking the banner on the right of the site or by typing events.redrc.net into the address bar of your browser.
Coverage starts tomorrow, so in the meantime head over the events section and read our brief event preview.
