Last weekend in Hyvinkää, Finland, the opening round of the Finnish 1/10th scale National Championships took place. Qualifying had seen Mugen driver Teemu Saarinen take the pole position for the 45 minute final, and he was able to carry that pace through into the finals, winning the race by a lap from Xray driver Pekka Kolvula in 2nd, with Tony Raikas running a Mugen, 3 laps further back in 3rd spot.
Source: Mugen [mid-mugen.eu]
Merlin Fuel have a report from their team driver Alexandar Hagberg, who last weekend took part in his first gas race in Växjö, southern Sweden at the opening round of the Swedish Nationals. Qualifying went well for the Xray driver as in the 3rd round out of 4 he could secure the overall TQ with a 2 second gap over the 2nd placed Kyosho driver Magnus Vässmar. In the finals Alex lead for the first 20 minutes until his engine flamed out, which gave Vässmar the lead ahead of Alexander. With 2 minutes to go Vässmar lost his 2nd gear and was running slowly around the track and this allowed Hagberg to take back the lead and with it the win, about half a lap down to 2nd placed Vässmar and another lap in front of 3rd placed Mugen driver Mikael Fransson.
Click here to see the final results
This past weekend saw the 2nd round of the Swiss 1/8th scale Championship take place in Aigle, in the French part of Switzerland, which is a nice track but very dangerous due to very little run off. On Saturday the weather wasnt so good and they only managed 2 rounds of qualifying before it started to rain. It was Motonica driver Shasa Lackner that claimed the pole position, setting a new lap record, in front of Juerg Nydegger and Luca Martinello both driving Mugen, with the final direct qualifying position going to Marco Mueller with his Shepherd.
Serpent designer Michael Salven took a late TQ with 25 laps in the fourth heat at round five of the 2008/2009 Western German Championship at Hamm but the lucky end of the day was in the hands of Steven Cuypers. While Salven ran out of fuel with his Mega powered Serpent 966, Cuypers pushed his Sirio powered Mugen to a clean victory. In the 30 minutes final Cuypers did 143 laps, two more than Tobias Hepp and three more than Karl-Heinz Meister, both with a Serpent-Mega combination.
Organisers of the new Belgian Mini-Z National Series were in touch to tell us more about the series that has seen Mini-Z clubs in Belgium get together to form the Championship. Right now the calendar consists of 6 events, held at the different Mini-Z clubs throughout the countey and it will be open to racers in 3 classes, Expert, Standard and LM. The opening race of the series has already taken place back in March with the next round being run next weekend in Brugge, going on till next December, with a break in the summer. For more information about the series visit the event site here.
Team Durango have been in touch to tell us about their latest race victories of the soon to be released DEX410 4WD electric buggy. As reported earlier this week they not only won the 4WD Stock class at last weekends North German regional race in Burgdorf but also finished first and second on the Potsdam race track near Berlin. Durango designer Gerd Strenge finished second in the Modified class while TD team driver Mirko Morgenstern secured himself the race win in the East German regional race. Both used Speed Passion motors, speedos and LiPo batteries to power their rides. In the South of Germany Team Durango team driver Martin Achter won on the very competitive 4WD Modified class over Ralf Missel and Bernhard Bachmann. All of them used the pre-production prototype of the DEX410 buggy who is undergoing the final testing stages as we type.
The 3rd round of the French 1/8th scale National Championship took place in Evry at the MRTE track near Paris. Nice weather greeted the 62 drivers in attendance and following qualifying it was winner of the first 2 rounds, Adrien Bertin who tool pole in the Elite class ahead of Stéphane Bouche in 2nd, while in the National class Gérald Colinet was the man to beat in front of Jérémy Becht. In the 45 minute Elite final the front pair took off ahead of the rest of the field, but a mistake in the chicane by Bouche saw him crash shifting the engine and in doing so damaging the gears, he would rejoin but way down the order. Meanwhile Adrien stormed ahead at the front to take his 3rd win in a row, 2 laps ahead of Romain Picard in 2nd and Stéphane Riccobono in 3rd. In the National class Damien Thirion got through to the front and was never challenged, winning by a lap from Serpent team mate Gérald Colinet in 2nd, with Jèrome Berthelot taking 3rd, 2 laps back.
Click here to see the final results
Last weekend saw the 2nd round of the Dutch championship run, this time it was on the very bumpy track of REAL80 in the far north of Holland, in Groningen. The first laps of training on Friday showed high wear on the tires but during the weekend a layer of rubber was put down which helped reduce the wear. The weather forecast was not looking good, with rain predicted n finals day and so people had to take care with the possibility of rain. On Sunday the first 2 rounds of qualification were in good weather conditions but after wards it started to rain but during the sub finals the rain stopped and during the first main final of the day the track was drying up. In the NK class it was round 1 winner Rick V taking the pole with a stunning 22 laps in 5:16.456 followed by Jordy Block, Rik Veenma and Daniel vd Drift. In the final which took place on a dry track, it was again RickV taking the lead until the finish of the race finishing 2 laps ahead of Rik Veenma while on 3rd spot was Arie Manten.
