EFRA Large Scale Off-road Euros – Report
This past week three European Championships were up for grabs in Austria in the Large Scale 1/6th 4WD, 2WD and Short Course classes. The 4WD final produced 30 minutes of the highest quality racing, with never more than a couple of seconds between the leaders and the lead changing on multiple occasions. Pekko Iivonen led from the pole but was soon in a monumental scrap with reigning European champions Dario Veseli of Croatia and TQ man Sven Rodenwald from Germany. With all three teammates in the MCD equipe, there was a desire from all three to keep the racing as fair as possible. The first turning point cam at about half way when a couple of mistakes dropped Sven out of contention, leaving Pekko and Dario to dice for the win. With fastest laps being traded and the lead regularly swopping the second key element of the final became apparent as one of Iivonen’s front tyres begun to become unglued. Now just missing the ultimate pace the Finnish youngster could not stay with Veseli who claimed his third successive 4WD European title.
The 2WD championship was as straightforward and the Short course has been unpredictable. Pole man Martin Kraus from the Czech republic led from the flag, was never headed and slowly eked out a commanding 21-second lead over TQ man and fellow Czech Pert Hartman, in 3rd was Mike Plekkepol making it a 1,2,3 for Dutch manufacturer Elcon.
The 10-truck Short Course A-main produced a cracking 30 minute final, as it seemed no one actually wanted to win it. The top 3 seeded drivers all led the event – Pole Man Judicael Gandino succumbed first to technical troubles, the no 2 Benjamin Dubois led for a few laps only to have a tyre come away from the rim leaving Losi’s Jack Keatley to head the field for 15 minutes only to experience 2 engine cut outs, the second of which left his truck stranded. This left Turkeys Orhan Tekkan to take up the lead and running a conservative pace it looked like the title would be an easy job, however the recovering Dubois, now with four fully functional tyres raced up to the back of the Orhan MCD truck but a last lap roll stopped the Frenchman’s progress to crown Tekkan the first ever Turkish EFRA European Champion.
Source: EFRA [efra.ws]
