The last round of the 2012 Portuguese off-road nationals took place at the Torres Vedras track near Lisbon. The Portuguese Championship was on the line for four drivers including Team Losi Racing’s Miguel Matias and Ricardo Monteiro. Miguel TQ’ed the weekend and went on to win the race and take his 12th national class title. Ricardo Monteiro finished 2nd as the vice-Champion.
Source: TLR [tlracing.com]
The 6th and final round of the Dutch 1/8th nitro on-road nationals was held at the small and tricky track of the MBC de Sluis in Gouda. A total of 45 drivers attended and together with the sunny weather this made for a fantastic final of the 2012 season. In the NK class the battle for the Dutch championship was between the two Xray drivers John Ermen and RickV with the latter having a small points advantage. During qualifying Jon showed a fantastic pace and took TQ with RickV only making the 4th fastest time. Belgium drivers Robin d’Hondt and Steven Cuypers took second and third on the grid and it looked like John would be unbeatable this weekend. But at the start of the main final John made a mistake putting him back in 10th place while Robin taking the lead closely followed by Steven and Rick. During the tire change Rick lost some time and fell back having to battle with John for the 3rd place while Steven and Robin were battling for the win. At the end Steven won the race just 0.8 seconds ahead of Robin giving RickV the national championship title.
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Last weekend saw the Polish electric on-road championships in Warsaw organized by the Polish Model Car Federation. The biggest race in the season attract over 60 drivers form Poland and Lithuania. The weather for the practice day was unusual as the drivers saw themselves faced with high humidity but now rain at all. This made the sugar that was used as traction enhancer sticking to the tires letting the cars behave like drift cars after two or three minutes on the track. This made for a hard time for both drivers and mechanics and lead to different TQs in all qualifying rounds. In the modified class the overall TQ went to Tamiya driver Michal Orlowski in front of Blazej Orlowski (Xray), and Mateusz Ogonowski (Yokomo). In ProStock the pole position was secured by Bartek Zambrzycki in front of Pawel Staszewski (Tamiya) and Wojtek Rozwadowski (Tamiya). Come Sunday the weather showed a much brighter side with low humidity and therefore predictable track conditions. In Modified class all three final runs went to Michal Orlowski. This secured Michal the championship title with Piotr Okonski in second (both Tamiya) and Mateusz Ogonowski (Yokomo) in third place. In ProStock the unexpected winner was Blazej Chlodzinski (Tamiya), who started from the 6th on grid and worked his way up. The second place went to Pawel Staszewski (Tamiya) with Wojtek Rozwadowski (Tamiya) the third.
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The last round of this year’s BTCC championship was held at Mendip Model Motor Racing Club track just outside the holiday resort of Weston-Super-Mare, a track we seem to end up at most years. The weather, when we got up Sunday morning was cloudy with some fine rain not enough to dampen the track but the day didn’t look to promising. At the drivers briefing it was decided that the format for the day would be 4 rounds of round by round qualifying the best 2 to count followed by 1 final.
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The final round of the BRCA 2WD nationals took place at the Kidderminster track and it was Schumacher team driver Simon Moss who took TQ in rounds 1 and 3 by some three seconds over his closed rival. During round 4 of qualifying the weather took a turn for the worst and the track became totally flooded with no chance of a resumption in the racing. This meant that Simon, who had taken the overall TQ would win the meeting as the qualifying results would be carried over into the finals.
Source: Schumacher [racing-cars.com] & oOple [oople.com]
Last weekend the German 1/10th 200mm nitro championship was held at the legendary track in Munster. The weather forecast promised rain for the practise days but dry weather for Saturday and Sunday. The Qualification started on Saturday morning, with the best round out of five counting. The whole weekend saw a close battle between Dirk Wischnewski and Eric Dankel, but Eric was slightly faster than Dirk and could secure the TQ spot in front of him. Just like the current EFRA rules there was no direct qualifying for the top 4 spots, and everybody had to go through the 30 minutes semi finals. The A final started after a small break and Dirk was leading the field followed by Eric and Toni Gruber. For the whole run Dirk and Eric battled for the lead with the better end for Eric who could profit from a couple of smaller mistakes from Dirk. At the end the two were only separated by 13 seconds with a strong Dominic Greiner finishing in 3rd position.
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The 2012 Norwegian 1/8th on-road championship was hosted by OMK at the beautiful Hvervenbukta facility in Oslo. The race was held as a one day event only saw ten drivers attending. The schedule saw one round of controlled practice followed by three rounds of qualifying and a 45 minutes final. In practice it was Frode Rasch-Olsen who set the fastest laptime with a 12.432, followed by my Stig Berntsen (12.505), Adrian Berntsen (12.506) and Lars Haugen (12.624). As the qualification started Adrian upped his pace and even though he had a mistake that cost him 13 seconds on the last lap, he still set TQ in the first round with 34 laps in front of Stig Berntsen with 32 laps and Frode Rasch-Olsen with 32 laps.
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DJ Apolaro took his Novarossi powered and Matrix shoe’d Capricorn C02 to a TQ and win at the GLC Race in Ohio. Due to the high grip conditions DJ and his team mate Kenny Ives went for an aggressive tire change strategy and pushed the entire race with a qualifying setup. The polesetter was able to lead from the start and to make a little gap on Ralph with a larger gap on the rest of the field. After the first stop, Ralph went into problems allowing DJ to breath a little. Just after half way through the final the Capricorn pilot made his tire change and was able to extend the lead to more than two laps by the end.
Source: Matrix Tires [matrixtires.it]
