May 18, 2013

Rheinard is Dutch ETS Top Qualifier

Marc Rheinard has secured overall TQ honours at the fourth round of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series in the Netherlands after he backed up yesterday’s Q1 performance with a new fastest time in Q2, outpacing defending champion Ronald Volker by 3.8-seconds.  Andy Moore completed the Top 3 for the opening round of action on Day 2 of the Apeldoorn event which due to overnight rain only got underway at lunchtime as race organisers waited until racing could resume on a fully dry track.

View our complete event coverage here.

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May 18, 2013

Michael Kammer wins East German regionals Rd2

The second round of the East German nitro on-road Championship took place at the fast track of Leipzig. A total of 22 drivers found the way to Leipzig with Shepherd racer Michael Kammer being one of them to score for the East German Championship. On Saturday the whole day the track was wet so the qualifying took place on Sunday morning under better weather conditions. In the last round of qualifying Michael secured himself the TQ spot to start the 30-minutes finale from the pole-position in front of reigning German 1/8 Champion Toni Gruber. At the start he could defend his lead chased be Toni Gruber close behind him. After a few laps Toni made a driving error followed by an unscheduled visit in the pitlane which cost a lot of time. Increasing his lead lap by lap Michael never looked back and crossed the finishing line four laps in front of Toni with Wilfried Stecker completing the podium.

Source: Shepherd [team-shepherd.com]

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May 18, 2013

Meen V. doubles at KM World Cup selection race

The second KM World Cup race in Japan attracted some 100 driver to race in the nitro 1/10th and 1/8th classes. The 200mm category saw Meen V. taking TQ in front of Keisuke Fukuda and Hung Cheung Hang. Come the start of the final Meen took off and never looked back taking the win some six seconds ahead of Keisuke. Two laps down Hang managed to secure the remaining podium spot making for a KM Racing 1-2-3. The 1/8th class was again dominated by Meen, Fukuda and Hang with Fukuda chasing Meen hard for the lead but six minutes into the race Keisuke hit a track marker and he had to retire. Now it was on Hang to chase Meen but at the end the KM driver won the race some two laps ahead of Hung Cheung Hang with Trin securing the last remaining podium spot. This again meant an all KM podium with the KM H-K8 prototype filling all top positions.

Click here to view the 1/8th podium

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May 18, 2013

Overnight rain delays start of Day 2

Overnight rain forced a delayed start to Day 2 of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series in the Netherlands but with the Apeldoorn track surface having now dried off, helped by 2-hours of open practice, the second round of qualifying has just got underway.  With each round of qualifying taking approximately 3 hours to run, the organisers hope  to be able to get in two rounds of qualifying today which would then see the best two of the three qualifiers count for the grid for tomorrow’s finals, Sunday’s weather giving a clear dry day.   With drivers getting only two rounds of controlled practice yesterday, no reseeding of the heats was made for the first qualifier as the limited running would not have been a true reflection of every driver’s pace and so now at the end of Q2 a reseed will be made for the final qualifier based on each drivers fastest time of the two heats completed.

View our complete event coverage here.

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May 18, 2013

Johor Indoor Carpet Masters 2013 – report

The inaugural Johor Indoor Carpet Master 2013 was held recently in a sleepy town best known for seafood in Pontian, Johor, a town located down south in Malaysia. The race was organised on a racer for racer concept by Ken Ng who managed to pull some resources as there is no indoor racing track facility  in Malaysia. The response for the race was great with some 80 entries from Malaysia and Singapore. The track used was a rather big temporary carpet track and motors being limited to brushless 13.5T. The class was run on hand-out Ride 32R tires. The race saw five rounds of qualifying with the three best would be chosen to determine the final grid. The first four rounds were held on Saturday and recent TITC attendees PY Tang and Azri Amri proved to be very fast. Both secured two wins each round of qualifying however, due to tie break of two combined best rounds, Azri took TQ by 3 seconds over PY, thus handing him overnight TQ on Saturday evening. Come Sunday morning, it was time for the penultimate round of qualifying and everyone had high hopes to do better and staying in the A Main. So the pressure was high and it was PY Tang who came in first thus securing him the top qualifier honours.

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May 17, 2013

Rheinard heads Tamiya 1-2 at Apeldoorn in Q1

Marc Rheinard headed a Tamiya 1-2 in the opening round of qualifying for Round 4 of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series, last year’s winner of the Dutch event setting the fastest pace around the Apeldoorn track from team-mate & Round 3 winner Viktor Wilck with reigning champion Ronald Volker completing the Top 3.  Having had yesterday’s open practice washed out by heavy rain and the forecast for Saturday not looking favourable, organisers last night made the call to reduce this morning’s controlled practice to just two rounds so as qualifying could get underway early and as many rounds as possible could be completed.  Despite the weather’s best efforts to disrupt Q1, the round having to be halted for a time due to light rain just as the top heats hit the track, thankfully a full round of qualifying was able to be completed.  Getting Q2 underway unfortunately a light drizzle set in and despite waiting to see if it would pass the organisers ultimately had to cancel the round.  Thankfully the latest online weather is showing that after a wet start to the day the rain should pass giving the opportunity for getting in two more rounds of qualifying in the evening giving a much fairer grid for the finals, the weather for Sunday giving a dry day.

View our complete event coverage here.

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May 17, 2013

Asian On Road Championships Rd 1 – report

After much anticipation the inaugural round of the AOC was held at RCI Raceway in Shanghai, China. The race took place at a beautiful facility with a pristine indoor asphalt track that has everything a racer could want. A perfect height driver stand, plenty of pit room and fantastic traction. The asphalt has natural traction as they do not put any sugar water on the track. The size of the track is 38 meters x 16 meters wide.  The layout that was designed for the AOC was a fast but technical layout making for drivers to have to be completely on their game to turn fast laps. The organizers ran 4 classes at the AOC Rd 1. Stock 17.5, FWD, F-1 and Super Stock 13.5. Modified is not normally run locally as Super Stock is the popular class for the top dogs so that is what was the premier class of the weekend.

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May 16, 2013

ROAR paved on-road nats – report

The 2013 ROAR paved on-road nationals was held in West Palm, Florida and was hosted by Tim Potter and Village raceway with help from ROAR Race management team. The format for the race was one day of practice on Thursday, two rounds of qualifying on Friday, two more rounds on Saturday and the finals on Sunday. The qualifying format was qualifying points with best two rounds out of 4 counting for final qualifying position. Everyone showed up early Thursday morning with hopes of getting in a full day of practice, soon it became apparent that was not going to be the case, most drivers were able to get in a run or two before the downpours came. With the track so was fresh in the morning and lower than expected grip all teams were scratching their heads not knowing whether to change their cars or not. Due to all the rain on Thursday ROAR allowed for some extra practice on Friday which was nice. In the Mod TC class it was Andrew Hardman, Ralph Burch, Paul Lemieux along with Keven Hebert who looked to be the fastest in the limited bit of practice. In the 17.5 TC division it was Scotty Gray leading the way, Scotty is most known for his talents in nitro racing but with the Nationals close to home he came out and was impressively fast in the 17.5 division. In the 13.5TC division Kory Parsons , Josh Cyrul and Andrew Knapp were all looking fast.

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