2024 Speed King Tour Rd1 – Report

The opening round of the Speed King Tour 2024 was held recently at Super RC Omiya indoor tarmac track in Saitama prefecture Japan with Infinity driver Jin Sawada taking the main win from Axon’s Hayato Ishioka.  The popular and competitive electric touring car series is now in its 11th year sand consisting of six rounds travels to circuits across Japan.  Host of Round 1,  the Super RC Omiya track is known for its high bite and the Speed King Tour specific rules specify controlled tyres and prohibit the use of tyre warmer, which are highly favoured by racers in Japan.  A major boost for the series was the participation of RC legend Atsushi Hara at the controls of soon to be release limiteds edition Xpress Execute XQ11 Hara Edition.

In this event, competition was held in three touring car classes –

TC0 class (Modified)
Jin Sawada who drove Infiniti car made fastest qualifying record, setting the top time to take pole position. And he also dominated A final race took win. AXON/RUSH driver Hayato Ishioka finished second and another AXON driver Kazuma Murai took third place of podium.

TC1 Class (17.5T stock)
Yuto Sakai won the class with a TQ, followed by Yuusei Iida in 2nd place and Shu Kawashima in 3rd place, they are all of Japan’s leading young racers.

TC2 Class (G-Force 13.5T and final gear ratio 6.0 or higher)
Rento Sasaki took the lead from the qualifying round and won the TQ and the final. 2nd place went to Tomoo Hasegawa and 3rd to Manabu Ota.

The next round of Speed King Tour 2024 will be held on 19th May at TM Circuit Wakayama in Wakayama prefecture which is regarded as one of the best circuits in Japan.

Source: Speed King Tour [speedkingtour.com]