Red RC » R Off Road

May 20, 2024

Ongaro wins Italian Nationals second round

Having taken maximum points from the opening round of the AMSCI Italian 1:8 Buggy National Championship held in March, defending Champion Davide Ongaro extended his points lead with a repeat victory at Round 2. Attracting 67 entries, it was to be a very challenging weekend for the host club Nitro Buggy Genzone as the event started with Friday’s practice being cancelled after heavy rain flooded the track. Preparing the track for a Saturday morning start having pumped out the water the club was dealt a second blow when they arrived Saturday morning to discover thieves had stolen equipment and catering supplies. Despite the incident, the club did manage to get the event underway with Ongaro’s Team Associated securing the TQ, after topping 2 of the 4 rounds, from Sworkz’s Mattia Polito and WIRC Racing’s Marco Baruffolo who topped one round each. After the Semi finals it was Polito who lined up on pole for the 45-minute final ahead of Ongaro, WIRC’s Andrea Trevisan and Infinity’s Riccardo Bertin. Over the race, the order would settle into a repeat of the season opener with Ongaro taking the win from Polito after a close battle with WIRC Racing’s Marco Baruffolo again completing the podium.

Image: Riccardo Verardo [Facebook]

May 15, 2024

Holdsworth brothers join Xray for 1:8 Buggy

Xray and their British distributors RC Disco have announced that brothers Josh & Luke Holdsworth are joining Team Xray to race in the 1:8 Nitro Buggy class with the XB8’24 powered by FX Engines. Josh and Luke are well known in 1:10 Offroad as leading National Championship drivers and European Championship Finalists, so Xray are happy to welcome them to race alongside their already formidable British 1:8 Offroad team. Both already showed their pace at last weekend’s BRCA 1:8 Nationals by making the Semi Finals with Josh just missing a Top 3 Podium at their first big race with the new cars.

Source: Xray [teamxray.com]

May 14, 2024

Boots gets first win of BRCA title defence

Round 2 of the BRCA 1:8 Nitro Buggy British National Championship took place in Shrewsbury over the weekend where Sworkz’s Elliott Boots registered the first win of his title defence. In qualifying it was the Xray of season opener winner Jonathan Skidmore who would take TQ just as he did at Round 1 with Boots 2nd and the Team Associated of Neil Cragg third. In the Semi Finals, the event would come to an early finish for Skidmore who misjudged the back step up, brushed the wooden board and broke the car just 5 laps in. With Boots winning his Semi final he took up pole position for the final ahead of the WIRC of Lewis Jones, Cragg and Michael Lewis. Just as the 45-minute final had started Boots hit trouble. A flameout caused by a stone on Lap 1 meant he was in the pits and despite the fast reactions of his pitman, the former European Champion found himself rejoining 2-laps down. Making a charge back through the field, with 8-minutes to go he had worked his way back to the front eventually crossing the finish line 2-laps clear of Cragg with the HB of Graham Alsop completing the podium. A five round championship, Brookthorpe is the next stop for drivers with the third round taking on June 15/16.

Image: Elliott Boots [Facebook]

May 12, 2024

IFMAR 2024 1:8 Offroad World C/ship Stage 1 Report

The organisers of the 2024 IFMAR 1:8 Offroad World Championship to be hosted at the RC-Redován circuit in Spain have published the Stage 1 report for the 19th running of the Championship. At the end of March, the impressive track which hosted the previous World Championship in 2022 was announced as a late replacement venue just a week after the originally selected hosts Brazil announced it would be unable to run the event for the FAMAR Bloc. Since then, the well known Baldo brother’s family have been busy making preparations once again for hosting the sport’s biggest race. Executing an excellent World Championship in 2022, where Davide Ongaro defended his title win from four years earlier in Australia, the Stage 1 Report contains important and useful information for the capacity entry that will descend on the track in early September. One big announcement from the report is that former EFRA President Javier Garcia will be Race Director.

View Stage Report here

May 6, 2024

Canas wins Silver State Indoor Championships

Sworkz Juan Carlos Canas took the big win at the 2024 Silver State Indoor Championships, the Spanish driver winning Pro Nitro Buggy ahead of the Tekno of Truggy Champion Ryan Maifield and TLR’s Dakotah Phend. Once again attracting a massive 1100+ entries, qualifying for the Las Vegas event would see Maifield secure the TQ honours after the completion of the 3 rounds ahead of Team Associated’s Spencer Rivkin with Canas third and Phend P4. In the 45-minute final, Rivkin enjoyed a few laps a the front early on before Maifield took charge but 10-minutes in costly mistakes dropped him back. With Canas taking the lead, pit stops giving Phend the lead for a few laps before everything settled down, once in front the European Champion edged out a lead eventually finishing with over 12-seconds on Maifield. Phend would complete the podium a further 5-seconds back. Having won the event a year earlier, Marco Barufollo would finish 5th at South Point Casino and Hotel behind Seth VanDalen. In Truggy, Maifield made the class his own taking the TQ and win from Mason Fuller and Phend, the Top 3 finishing in the same order as they started. In eBuggy, Top Qualifier Fuller won followed home by Maifield and Canas.

Image: TheDirt Racing [Facebook]

May 1, 2024

The Michal Orlowski Column – Edition No.2

You all loved his first column so we are delighted that Michal Orlowski has somehow found time in his busy schedule to give us another great column as an insight into his world as Schumacher’s star factory driver. Once again we’ll let Michal take it away and tell you in his own style what has been going on over the last two months….. ‘It has been a while since my last update here. We have been hard at work with the team to finish off the winter season on a high. We attended numerous events between February and April, which I will tell you all about, emphasising the struggles and how we could overcome them together. After attending the Mibosport Cup in early February, it was time to switch back to buggy mode. For the last few years, the MK GP event has been one of the mostly anticipated off-road races of the winter season with hundreds of drivers participating, but more importantly thousands of people coming to watch us race RC cars. The event is held in the MK shopping centre in Milton Keynes, UK, home to the Redbull F1 team. The event is organised by the Silverstone Club, who hosts weekly club races and a winter series at a smaller venue. This gave us the chance to test on the unique carpet the MK GP crew decided to use since 2023.

Continue reading here

April 26, 2024

2024 Philippine Masters Chassis Focus Index

Last weekend Red RC made our third trip to Manila for the world class offroad event that is the Philippine Masters. Famed as being Asia’s biggest annual 1:8 Offroad race, the Circulo Verde track is renowned for its difficulty and 3D style build with this year’s 12 edition of the race using a new method to seal the surface. This resulted in minimal tyre wear even over the 1-hour Main final in which Team Associated’s Davide Ongaro recovered from an early flame out to take his fourth win in the capital city. The first time Sparko was officially represented at the race, a great driver by Ryan Pavidis netted the American runner-up spot. Great to see the legendary Atsushi Hara back racing at the the front end. It was great to once again do a chassis focus with him, Sworkz hooking him up for the event, and it great to see the former World Champion enjoying his racing so much once again. Attracting 205 entries from 16-nations, we got the chance to photograph buggies from 9 drivers representing 7 different manufacturers as well as the TQ & winning Sworks truggy of Bulgaria visitor Plamen Petrov we will have compiled into our latest Chassis Focus Index.

View Chassis Focus Index here

April 23, 2024

Rivkin makes it 3 in a row with ROAR Nationals double

Team Associated’s Spencer Rivkin made it three consecutive years of being crowned 1:10 Offroad ROAR National Champion with a buggy double at the 2024 Championships held at the Beach RC & Hobbies track in South Carolina. A relatively small entry by US race standards, 93 drivers making for a total of 201 entries, all the major contenders where there for the Mod 2WD and 4WD titles. In qualifying it would be former World Champion Rivkin with the 2WD TQ ahead of the similar buggy of Aydin Horne and the TLR of Dakotah Phend. 4WD would see the Top 2 order reversed with Horne the Top Qualifier from Rivkin with Schumacher’s Broc Champlin 3rd. With Horne getting passed Rivkin to take A1 and Rivkin then taking A2 it went to A3. While Horne laid down the fastest lap, he couldn’t get by Rivkin who eventually took the win by 9/10ths of a second and with it the overall title with Phend completing the podium. In 4WD, Rivkin got by Horne in the first two encounters to seal the deal early. Winning A3, Horne took the runners up spot with 2WD World Champion Tater Sontag completing the podium for TLR. Horne wouldn’t go home empty handed however taking Stadium Truck title ahead of Rivkin and the Xray of Tom Rinderknect.

Image: Team Associated [Facebook]