Red RC » R Off Road

January 7, 2009

X-Factory appoints new Team Manager

X-Factory have announced the appointment of Paul Sinclair to the position of Race Team Manager. Already the Chief Engineer, Paul will now handle both positions. “So much of our engineering work comes through the Team that it makes sense to do both those positions,” said Paul. “I’m in daily contact with most of the drivers already, and of course we discuss competition-related things as well as new designs, so this really won’t be much additional work.” Company President Chazz said, “Sales of the X-60, released in December, have been spectacular, taking all my time, and now we’re working hard to bring the X-6 Squared onto the market. X Factory sales have taken off in the past year, and I’ve got so much to do that I often am unable to handle Team-related issues on a timely basis. I’m so happy that Paul is relieving me of those responsibilities. Our race Team is in capable hands and will be much better served.”

Source: X-Factory [xfactoryrc.com]

January 6, 2009

Israeli National Championships Rd1

The opening round of the Official Israeli National buggy & truggy Championships took place last weekend at the Rishpon track in the centre of Israel. The weather was fantastic and the atmosphere was good, with top drivers from all over the country taking part in the event. In the buggy class it was Kyosho MP9 racer Yaniv Sivan that won by less than a lap from Nir Sivan, with Guy Rinkevich in 2nd, a lap down on the front pair. The truggy class saw a win for Nir Sivan by a clear 2 lap margin, ahead of Xray racer Meir Azulay in 2nd, while buggy winner Yaniv Sivan took 3rd, 7 seconds back. The junior buggy and truggy classes were taken by Omer Asaig.

Source: RC Zone [rczone.co.il]

January 5, 2009

Yannick Aigoin to use Novarossi engines

It has been confirmed that former European Champion and Losi team driver Yannick Aigoin has done a deal with Novarossi for 2009. Coming onboard, not only as a front running driver, Yannick will help with the development and promotion of the engines as Novarossi tries to regain its leading position in the buggy market. Yannick once more will team up with Bernard Durand at Racing Experience, having both worked together previously at RB Products. Aigoin Racing, the French driver’s company, is the National distributor for GRP engines and tires but it is unclear now if this will continue.

Source: Racing Experience [racing-experience.fr]

January 5, 2009

Arizona Championship Series Rd5

This past weekend saw the 5th round of the Arizona Championship Series held at The Nitro Pit. A few big names showed up to get some practice before The Dirt Nitro Challenge to be held in February and it was Losi driver Billy Fischer that held off the competition to win both Expert buggy & truck classes. In the intermediate classes, Cody Rothe took the buggy win for Losi from TQ, while in the truck class it was Kyosho racer Troy Sears.

Click more for final podiums… content

January 5, 2009

Davide Tortorici to use O.S. in 09

It has been confirmed that 2 time European Champion and 5 time Italian National Champion Davide Tortorici will use O.S. Engines in 2009. The Crono racer previously used the GRP based Falcon motors, but will return to the Japanese made engine with whom he won his second European title in 2005. Radiosistemi, who make the Crono car are also Italian distributors for O.S. Engines. Davide also confirmed his move from GRP tires to French tire maker 6mik.

Source: RC Revolution [rcrevolution.net]

January 2, 2009

Maifield wins Buggy at Winter NitroX

Puerto Rico recently hosted their own “big race” style event and the organizers made sure that the attendees added to that feel, with 8 pros being flown in, Jimmy Babcock running the show and nearly 250 attendees in both classes. The very large track had little maintenance performed on it during the course of the weekend and this contributed to the rough, dusty, and dry conditions with the jumps being a huge source of difficulty. Ryan Maifield continued his winning ways from the JConcepts Clash onto international soil where he was able to TQ 1/8th buggy over the likes of Adam Drake and Jesse Robbers. Maifield took control of the main early and cruised to a victory some 30 seconds clear of the Drake in 2nd place. In 1/8th truck Adam TQ’d and had the lead in the main until about 3 minutes to go when he got caught up with a lapped car. This allowed Maifield to take over first and with 1 lap to go Ryan got bit by a lapper. Even though he pushed hard, the Drake had too much of a lead to overcome in 1 lap and held of Maifield by half a second.

Click more to see a video from the event… content

January 2, 2009

RC Pro & RCSignup NCCS

RC Pro and RCSignup have just introduced a nice initiative called the National Championship Club Series (NCCS). There have been a large number of tracks closing because of less club racing, so this series has been designed to bring more interest to local club racing but will also interest those racers who only race locally and who can’t or don’t travel. Any track in the U.S.A. can signup as long as they run the Slash spec class and have electronic scoring. Tracks can schedule 6 club events throughout the year that will score National Points at no cost to the tracks. Any racer can enter and score points at any track in the series and each racers best 4 results will count. The NCCS website is designed so tracks can enter their race results and the site will automatically calculate the points and display the standings for each track plus the national standings. There will be year end awards for the top 20 Nationally.

For more information visit the site here.

January 1, 2009

Team Durango part with Neumann

Team Durango have officially announced that long-term team driver Jörn Neumann will not be part of the team from January 1st 2009 onward. Having won multiple national titles as well as a European title, together with some of the most important invitational races in both electric and nitro classes, Jörn was an integral part of Team Durango for the last couple of years. Team Durango wishes Jörn all the best and thanks him for the successful years of racing as a team. In a separate statement from Jörn he had the following to say:

I want to say thank you to Team Durango for the last couple of years. And a very big thank you to Gerd Strenge for his support. But sometimes changes happen and I search for new tasks.

As reported earlier, the place in the team will be filled by Martin Achter.