Ielasi Tuned have announced the signing of Germany’s Kerstin and Christian Bessler to their off-road team. The couple will power their Team Associated buggies using the new Ielasi Tuned buggy engines in this year’s campaign that will include the German National Championship, the European Championships A as well as during selected Italian events such as the Bitty Contest in Bologna.
Source: Ielasi Tuned [ielasituned.com]
The BRCA Electric Touring Car Championship got underway over the weekend with round one at the popular Cotswolds track. Nine heats were run, five for the Stock 13.5 class and four Modified heats. Mixed weather conditions on day one provided a tough test for the drivers but thankfully day two was blessed with dry conditions for the finals. Defending champions from last year were present in the form of Schumacher’s Elliott Harper and Xray’s Zak Finlay, and a top class Modified entry included Xray’s Alex Hagberg who it is hoped will contest a handful of UK nationals this season.
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The recent Russian Grand Prix was held in Moscow with the event attracting some of the fastest Russian drivers to compete on a purpose-built, complex, and high-bite carpet indoor track. In the 4WD Buggy class ETS A-finalist Maxim Laverychev and Dmitry Malyshko battled for the TQ with the better end for Dmitry but Maxim stroke back in the finals as he was able to come out fastest in A1 and A2 to grab the overall win early.
Round one of the Dutch BL-Cup was held at the RC de Fivelcrossers track in Appingedam. After a week of rain and cold weather the drivers were greeted by a dry and sunny weekend and a track that soon started to dry once the opening round of qualifiers was done. Bart Mullink would come out fastest in the qualifiers from Kris la Gasse and Wintercup winner Patrick Carels. For 2016 the organisers introduced a new last change heat for the 12 dropouts before the main final and Mike Plekkepoel and Tim Donk were the first to enjoy this new opportunity. The main final then saw Bart dropping the second early but the lap after Bart took over the lead from Kris and from that moment on he never looked back to take the win with a 15 seconds gap on Kris while Patrick rounded out the top 3 result.
Thanks to Oscar Koot for the report.
The first inaugural Le Mans and Historic RC meeting was held at the Hudy Racing Arena in Trencin, Slovakia. The one day event attracted about 50 drivers from three countries to compete in the three classes of vintage 1/8th on-road, Le Mans and Formula. In the Historic RC Veteran Tour class, vintage 1/8th cars line the SG Futura, SG Columbia, Cumis, Graupner or Hudy were raced with Jarda Beran driving an original Juraj Hudy constructed car taking the TQ with 31 laps ahead of Pekarek and Blaha, both using very nice home-made BMW CSL bodyshells on their Cumis chassis. The quickest car was a McLaren M8F on a Graupner Club 90 chassis driven by Roman Krejci but unfortunately he did not finish this heat.
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Yokomo have announced that Germany’s Marc Rheinard will run the company’s all-new YRX12 1/12th pan car at the forthcoming IFMAR 1/12th scale World Championships in Beijing, China. The Tamiya Factory driver already chooses Yokomo buggies for his 1/10th off-road outings and he will now also run the Japanese manufacturer’s competition on-road pan car at an international level.
Source: Yokomo [teamyokomo.com]
Yokomo have announced the upcoming release of their new YRX12 1/12th scale pan car kit. The car features an all-new front suspension design based on the double wishbone suspension of the previous car but with a focus on high-speed cornering as well as ease of setup and maintenance. The front end now sports a pushrod design for optimised cornering stability with adjustable roll centre and track width settings remaining for suspension fine-tuning purposes. The previously used anti-roll bar was dropped for a simpler design and to reduce overall weight. Also new is a sliding upper bulkhead arrangement for easy caster angle adjustments with the bulkheads and pivot balls can be spaced down in order to create reactive caster settings.
Round two of the Jakarta Regional Buggy Championships was held at the Graha Raya track. A total of 48 drivers attended and the racers were greeted by a wet and muddy track due to overnight rain. Team Associated driver Rama Tribudiman would put his O.S. powered buggy on TQ but in the 45-minute A-main it was John Agus (Kyosho/O.S.) who came out fastest from Adrian Susanto (TLR/O.S.) who ended the race 14 second down in second. Only 1.3 seconds behind Susanto, Adrian Wicaksono (Mugen/Reds Racing) completed the podium result. Behind the three Jason Nugroho (Xray/Novarossi) and Kenji Liono (SWorkz/SPower) rounded out the top 5. TQ holder Rama unfortunately ran into problems in the race, eventually ending it in 14th position.
