The opening round of the Italian Nitro On-road National Championship was held at the Fiorano track over the weekend. In the 1/8th Expert class, 9-times World Champion, Infinity’s Lamberto Collari took the win in the highly contested main final with Shepherd’s Marco Vanni coming in 2nd and Infinity’s Dario Balesti rounding out the podium in 3rd.
Ride have announced the signing of Xray’s Jan Ratheisky to their factory team. The German front runner and multi-class specialist has a long list of international race wins under his belt at events such as the ETS, TITC and many more. Jan will be using the full range of Ride products while also helping with Research and Development and he had the following to say:
I’m really happy to join team Ride and excited to be a part of the team to represent the brand and the products. Also, I will be involving product testing for their R&D and will start using all Ride products at the race events I will attend. Looking forward to see everyone at the tracks.
Source: Ride [rc-ride.co.jp]
Round one of this season’s BRCA Touring Car series saw a new revised format with the old 2-day event now condensed in to a 1-day meeting. The established Modified and 13.5 Boosted classes were also bolstered up by a 13.5 Blinky class and a full entry of 110 drivers made for a very competitive round one at the technical West London track. The new format meant less opportunity for mistakes and qualifying heats were very close, in Modified it was Xray’s Olly Jefferies that took three of the four rounds of qualifying to line up ahead of Schumacher’s Elliott Harper and defending champion, Team Associated’s Chris Grainger. In the 13.5 Boosted class Zak Finlay took TQ and looked to be on for another dominant win, Zak took the win in all four rounds of qualifying while in the new Blinky class Danny Booker took TQ.
Continue reading the report here
Round two of the Jokerteam GT12 Championship was held in Bolzano, Italy over the weekend. A chilly early morning gave way to beautiful sunshine and perfect conditions to set the stage for round two of the series while the newly designed track delivered once again optimal traction levels. This time the track was run counter clockwise meaning the drivers had to learn new lines and once the qualification rounds got under way, Mattia Dall’Oca made immediately clear that he was once again the man to beat, TQ-ing all three rounds and delivering an impressive 29-lap run in Q3. Nevertheless Ivan Milesi opposed fierce resistance by having a remarkable pace and thus securing P2 for the A-mains, just ahead of teammate Alessandro Rampini. Behind the top 3 drivers, the battle for P4 on the grid was on between Johnny Orsolin, Claudio Giovanelli, Alessandro Giubbilei and Lorenzo Crepaldi all drove within a gap of less than 2 seconds.
Continue reading the report here
Round one of the East German Nitro On-road regionals was held in Senftenberg on a technical low-grip track. In the 1/8th IC class Toni Gruber (WRC/Novarossi) would take the TQ after the qualifiers in front of the Shepherd/Mikrotek duo of Michael Kammer and Torsten Müller. After the start of the main final Toni took the lead in front of Torsten and Michael. Due to a rain shower shortly before the start of the main the track was pretty difficult to tackle, leading to early mishaps of Toni and later Torsten. Later and due to a thunderstorm the main had to be called a day some 17 minutes into the race, handing Michael Kammer the win from Xray driver Wilfried Stecker with Torsten Müller rounding out the podium.
Thanks to Torsten Müller for the report.
The opening round of the Hungarian On-road Nationals was held at the Pécs track. In the 1/10th 200mm Nitro Modified class Zsolt Bajusz (Xray) was in control of things all day, taking the TQ and pole position for the 30-minute main final and also winning the race after leading the main for most of the time. Peter Taal (Serpent) had to settle for second while Tamas Sagi (Serpent) rounded out the top 3 podium result.
Continue reading the report here
The opening round of the Croatian Championship was held at the Ayrton Senna track in Zagreb. Classes run were 13.5T Touring Stock, 1/8th IC track, 1/8th GT and large scale touring cars. In the 13.5T Touring Stock class Patrik Pozgaj took the overall TQ after coming out fastest in the second and third qualifier. Zeljko Selman and Neven Simic would round out the top 3 result so far. In the mains the race for the overall win was on between Patrik and Zeljko. With victories in A2 and A3 Patrik secured himself the day’s win while also scoring the fastest lap as Zeljko had to settle for second. Neven would complete the top 3 result.
Italian company Capricorn have announced the return of Kyle Branson to their team. Following a short stint with newcomers Infinity, Kyle will campaign Capricorn cars in 1/8th and 1/10th nitro on-road as well as in 1/10th electric touring classes at events such as the ENS and the European and World Championships. Kyle says:
I want to thank Patrizio Rossi for welcoming me back to rejoin Capricorn after a short departure. I really look forward to working close with Patrizio and the rest of the team in the future. The first race I will attend will be round 1 of the ENS in May.
Source: Capricorn [capricornrc.com]
