Roche Products International have announced the signing of multiple IFMAR 1/12th and 2014 ISTC World Champion Naoto Matsukura to race the company’s Rapide P12 1/12th scale pan car in the coming season. His campaign will also include the 2016 1/12th World Championships in China and additionally Naoto will help with further R&D work on Roche’s Rapide P12 platform.
Source: Roche [rocherc.com]
The well-known EWS Events team have announced the third edition of the popular International Carpet Challenge event will take place on the weekend of 19-21 February 2016 at their indoor venue near Southend, UK. The race, which will feature classes for Modified and Super Stock Touring Car, plus Formula 1, has grown over the last two years and attracts many drivers from across Europe. As well as the top UK drivers, last year’s runner up Christopher Krapp has already informed us that he plans to attend again. Additionally, a number of Europe’s top Modified, Stock and Formula racers are expected to make the trip to England. Entries for the event, which will also feature a Saturday night drivers’ party at a nearby venue, are now open and will be capped at 150 to ensure a full race program with plenty of track time for everyone can be completed. Full details, rules, and entries are available here.
Round one of the French Winter Nationals was held in Montbrison. In the Touring Modified class Lucas Urbain (VBC) and Alexandre Laurent (Xray) battled for the TQ spot with the better end for Alexandre whose last minute shot in the final qualifier handed him the overall TQ and the pole position for the triple A-mains. The final legs then were as tight as the qualifiers. Lucas would come out successful in the opening A-final but Alexandre stroke back in A2 and A3 to take the overall win from Lucas. Loic Jasmin (Yokomo) came in third to round out the podium.
The 11th edition of the PN Racing World Cup will be held this coming weekend in Maranello, Italy. Born from the idea of PN Racing’s Philip Ng and considered to be the most important Mini-Z race World-wide with former host countries being the U.S. and Singapore, the event will make its first ever stop in Italy. Organised by Minizracing and Davide Marka the event will see the attendance of 140 drivers from different countries to compete in the five classes of 2WD, GT Mod, PanCar, Formula 1 and Le Mans. The race direction will be carried out by Riccardo Acciari and Giuliano Golfieri and more information about the race can be found here.
The second round of the BRCA North Midlands GT Clubmans series was held at Swifts Raceway. James Wright (Xray) would take the TQ in the Formula class from teammate James Millbank (Xray) and Exotek driver James Greener. The final then saw Wright taking off with no problems while Millbank ran into issues in lap five when he tried to lap a backmarker. Touching the brakes in a corner send his car off the track due to traction rolling, which dropped him back to fifth. Millbank was able to recover to third and that’s how the main ended. Up front James Wright took the win from James Greener on the runner-up spot.
Novarossi have announced the signing of Dominic Greiner to their on-road team. The former Max Power driver will use the Italian engines to power his Serpent rides in the coming season that will include both national and international appearances.
Source: Novarossi [novarossi.it]
ENS podium finisher and Worlds finalist Andrea Pirani completed a clean sweep at the Fiesta Matrix race held last weekend in Valencia, Spain. Hosted by the AUTET club and with the event planned on three days, worrying weather forecasts for Sunday forced the organisers to compress the whole racing action into Saturday. Andrea took the TQ in every round to start first on the grid, followed by Serpent driver Nacho Lopez and the two locals of Signes Rubio and Revert. “Mr. Matrix” himself, Cristian Boni would start fifth on the grid, going on to take the lead in the 45 minutes final thanks to a mistake by Pirani, an then would stay in the first place until the 24 minute mark, when a bad tyre stop would send him back in fourth position. Pirani’s comeback wouldn’t find any resistance, and Andrea was able to put his WRC back on the top after the tyre stops, and went on to win the race with a two laps lead on the ARC debutant Cristiano Sartor and Cristian Boni, who would round up an all-Italian Podium.
Continue reading the report here
The sixth and final round of the Speed King Tour 2015 was held at the Crest Speedway indoor carpet track in the Gunma prefecture. Going into the final round the overall title already had been decided with TRF factory team driver Akio Sobue taking the Modified class title and privater Kengo Yabata coming out successful in the Stock class. So far Akio had TQ’ed all five rounds of the championship but this time local star and 2015 JMRCA 1/12th on-road national champion Yugo Nagashima would deny Akio another one as the Yokomo driver grabbed the pole position for the A-main. VBC driver Hayato Ishioka put his car on the 2 spot while young Yokomo driver Naoki Akiyama rounded out the Modified class qualifying in third. Akio had problem in the first qualifier and finished the qualifiers in 4th position.
