The final round of the X-Factory UK Winter Series was held this past weekend and it was Ellis Stafford and Kevin Hunt who sealed the overall championship in the 2WD and 4WD class respectively. Ellis steered the new Carisma Racing 2WD prototype to the overall title with TLR’s Kevin Hunt and Team Associated’s Joe Renton rounding out the 2WD podium. Over in 4WD it was Ashley Wiffen and Darren Boyle who completed a Carisma Racing podium sweep.
The opening round of the East Touring Series was held at East RC Speedway, east Jakarta this past weekend. The 3-race series is supporting the primary Open Brushless 13.5 class and the top 2 drivers of the overall standings will receive a free trip to Thailand’s 2018 BIRC race in Bangkok. Racing-wise it was Bowie Ginting who secured the pole, almost two seconds ahead of Arya Seta while Peter Anthonijsz lined up in 3rd. The opening two mains were won by Bowie for an early overall victory while the race for the remaining two podium spots was on between several drivers as Christian Mamesah and Teddy Syach, who lined up 4th and 5th respectively, joined the podium battle. In the end, Syach took 2nd and Mamesah snatched the 3rd spot.
Team Orion have welcomed Chad Phillips as the new US team manager. Chad will support the company’s Electric and Nitro race teams both at the track and with day-to-day responsibilities. Chad has been involved in the RC industry for many years and has a great expertise in electric and nitro racing and he will continue building a successful team not only at international and national but also at regional level.
Source: Team Orion [teamorion.com]
Xray have announced the signing of US off-road frontrunner, Tommy Hinz to their factory team. The Reedy Race runner-up and Summer Indoor Nationals Champion will be running Xray’s full line of 1/10th and 1/8th off-road kits at all major national and international events and he has the following to say:
I am very excited to announce that I will be running for Xray. The quality of the products is unmatched and the cars are so precise and nice to drive. Definitely can’t wait to get these cars all dialed in at the track. Thanks to Xray for the opportunity to run for such awesome company.
Source: Xray [teamxray.com]
The Herts Nitro Model Club held their Rock Crawling Grand Opening recently and despite the terrible weather, snow blowing in the wind with sub-zero temperatures, the club had throughout the day 25 to 30 die-hard rock crawlers and scalers in attendance. After long discussions over the last few years about building a rock crawling course, John Geaves at the end of 2017 said he would take the lead on this project. John had been to the Fairlop Rock Crawling course and enlisted the help of their course builder, Neil Smith. The plan was to cater for Rock Crawlers and Scale Crawlers. Materials landed on site and John and Neil set at a rate of knots building the course and within a couple of months it started to look impressive. Then with the help of CML Distribution, Herts RC Models and Logic RC the date for a grand opening was set. HNMC would like to say thank you to Jason Huntley from CML Distribution and Stewart Wilcox from Logic RC who provided demos all day. Also a big thank you to CML Distribution and Logic RC for their ongoing support. The club looks forward to more crawler open days and improving the course and if it becomes popular extending it further. For further information you can contact HNMC at info@HNMC.co.uk.
The first and second rounds of the BRCA GT12 National Series 2018 were hosted by the Eastbourne Electric Car Club at the Robertsbridge Community Sports Hall, Robertsbridge Community College, East Sussex. This is a new format this year for the BRCA GT12 National series with three venues hosting two rounds each over a weekend. Saturday saw 75 drivers attending round 1 with 73 drivers attending round 2 on Sunday with most drivers electing to attend both days. The race format for both days was a practice heat, four qualifying rounds and one final. The track was laid on ETS carpet with the introduction of orange dots to mark each apex which guided drivers to the racing line around the track.
The opening round of the Bolivian 1/8th Off-road Nationals was held in La Paz this past weekend. Due to the location of the track, high above sea level, engine tuning was very difficult for the nitro drivers as were the weather conditions with rain making for a muddy track at times. In the end it was Carlos Guerra who made the best out of the conditions to bring home the win in the Nitro Buggy class from Bryan Bohrt 2nd and Jorge Zamora 3rd, making it an all JQ Racing top 3. Over in E-Buggy it was again Carlos Guerra with the win as Jorge Zamora and Wilson Cuellar rounded out the top 3 results for another JQ Racing 1-2-3 finish.
Source: JQ Racing [jqracing.com]
Round 4 of the Finnish FinTrack Tour took place at the Äänekoski indoor track last weekend. The facility offers both permanent on and off-road tracks and the club did a great job again hosting the indoor season finale. In the Touring Modified class, run on Saturday, Viljami Kutvonen took the win from Joel Valander and Georgy Chmigal in 2nd and 3rd respectively. The championship has three rounds ahead with the battle for the top 3 spots still being on between the 55 drivers that attended so far.
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