For the past eight years R/C Excitement in Fitchburg, Massachusetts has hosted the Gobbler race, and the ninth annual event took place last weekend. X Factory team manager Chris Cristo TQed 2WD Short Course and took a wire-to-wire win in the 8 minute A main. John Cravotta qualified his X Factory truck third and finished second, putting the X-Team 1-2 on the podium.
Source: X Factory [xfactoryrc.com]
The 4th and final round of the South African nitro on-road nationals took place at the TRAP racing facility just outside the capital city of Tshwane. Nearly 60 drivers from around South Africa attended the event for both 1/10th touring and 1/8th scale. Having already won the championship after 3 rounds the top qualifier in the 1/8th class was current SA champion Wayne Joelson (Mugen Seiki/Novarossi) followed closely by Dawie vd Merwe (Mugen Seiki/Novarossi) and Imtiaz Salie (Mugen Seiki/Max). The final then was won by Imtiaz Salie who took his first 1/8th scale victory and secured the vice championship.
Click here to view the 1/8th class top 10 standing
Serpent introduce the J191 bodyshell for 1/10 formula 1 chassis. The body is made from clear polycarbonate and is modelled after the Jordan 191 F1 without going too much into detail. Made for Serpent’s F110 chassis the body should fit a wide range of other cars too. Included with the 191, that is useable with both lexan and solid plastic front wings, are three different driver helmets.
Source: Serpent [serpent.com]
A round of the Portugal Off Road Series was run at the RC Indoor Oeste track and in the 4WD buggy class it was Xray’s Bruno Coelho who dominated the field in qualifying. Due to the very technical layout of the track the finals were very demanding for all, but Bruno transformed his TQ spot into an overall win with Nuno Rebelo following him in 2nd place. Rodrigo Luis completed the top 3 while Nuno Roque and Tiago Vieira came in 4th and 5th respectively.
Click here to view the top 10 result
Clark’s introduce the Jabber 2011 World Championship replica electric on-road bike kit. The winning bike of the 2011 Worlds and 2013 Worlds warm-up winner is constructed from high-quality carbon fibre and aluminium parts and designed by former (RC) Superbike World Champion Edi Winter. The kit, that will come as rolling chassis, is now available for pre-order with shipping being expected to start end of January 2014.
Click here to view more images
The third round of the South Swedish Cup for electric touring cars was held in Alvesta by the Wäxjö MS on a fairly technical track The schedule saw three rounds of qualifying and local driver Markus Hellquist dominated the modified class, not giving the others a real chance to challenge for the TQ spot. The battle was then on for the runner up spot between Jonas Andersson and Daniel Carlsson and with a great 2nd run from Jonas he managed to secure the second place on the starting grid ahead of Daniel Carlsson. The 4th to 6th place drivers also had were only separated by a second meaning the race would see some nice fights in the finals.
Click here to continue reading
The Associated X-Mas Challenge took place last weekend in Linköping, Sweden. The event saw 74 entries in the short course modified, 1/16 buggy, modified buggy 2WD and modified buggy 4WD classes. Team Associated’s Niclas Månsson took the pole position in 2WD and 4WD buggy and later went on to win both classes. In 2WD Mikael Johansson came in 2nd and with Andreas Edwinsson (Kyosho) taking 3rd place. The 4WD class had Michael Kronoström (Team Associated) taking the runner-ip spot, Felix Sandberg (Kyosho) completed the podium in 3rd position.
Source: MustitRC [mustit.no]
As we hinted at in our Driver Market story last week, UK front runner Lee Martin today announced that Tamiya TRF have chosen not to renew his contract having decided to reduce operations in the off-road market for the foreseeable future. After a four year campaign with the Japanese manufacturer Lee is now looking for a new 1/10th off-road ride for the 2014 season and beyond. The runner-up of the 2WD class at the 2013 IFMAR World Championships should have no problems to find a new chassis sponsor given his CV that includes four IFMAR Worlds finals, four European and four national championships as well as a vast amount of individual national wins. A driver of Lee’s level should have no problem attracting offers but as stated previously we expect him to sign a deal with Yokomo.
