With the Bank Holiday weekend up on us it was to West London Racing Centre for their Annual GP for 2012 being sponsored by Schumacher Racing. Entries were a little disappointing, maybe due to the adverse weather conditions that we have been recently experiencing in the UK. There were a total of 61 entries for this event and this being split between 17.5 Blinky, 13.5 Open and 10.5 Open.
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The first round of the Brazilian on-road nitro nationals was dominated by Team Shepherd Brazil with victories in all three classes. Additionally more than 70% of the attending drivers were using a Velox V10, an impressive result of the hard work of Brazilian driver and distributor Eduardo Dulac who provided a tent and seats for all attending Shepherd drivers. In the “Masters” category it was current Touring B champion Luciano Aquino who crossed the finishing line in first position. He was joined on the podium by his new team-mate Edson Lima in third position who changed to Shepherd in late 2011. In the “Touring B” category Evandro Rocchie took the victory for Team Shepherd finishing 5 laps over the second placed driver while in the “Touring A” category it was Shepherd driver Gabriel Brito finishing 5 laps in front of second placed driver with Shepherd team mate Vitor Ohta competing the podium.
Source: Shepherd [team-shepherd.com]
The second round of the British 200mm Championship was held at the superb Stonehaven circuit in Aberdeen, Scotland. The weather was very cold over the weekend and we even had a little snow during Saturdays practice. Mark Green was fastest with his Serpent 747 at the end of practice and actually set a new lap record of 15.1 seconds. New Capricorn signing Adam Catchpole was just behind Mark, running his LAB-C02 for the very first time. After Adam and Mark it was very close between the other top drivers of Simon Wood, Alex Thurston, Joe Kerry, Andrew Hastings, Matthew Cook, and Irish Champion Chris Steele who had made the trip.
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The 2nd race of the Dutch 2012 season took place on the circuit of Mach One in Helmond last week end. Practice day was rained out, and it even rained lightly on Sunday, race day, but the track was astro turf, so the race was run. Drivers were searching for the right setup and / or tires but it soon became clear that whatever you did, the track was slippery. The qualifications were a real spectacle of pirouettes and slides and JQ-driver Jorg Van Leuken was fastest. In the afternoon the rain stopped and the final was run on a dry track. In the main final, Jorg van Leuken took off from pole and drove fast. He was never really threatened and drove unchallenged to his first win of the season. After his poor start Jeffrey Halsema took the second spot. The third place was a very consistent Paul Geelen.
Source: JQ [jq-products.com]
Round 6 of the Florida State Electric State Series (FSEARA) was held at Superior Hobbies in Orlando, FL. Superior Hobbies is one of the premier hobby shops in Florida and their parking lot track always provides for good racing and a strong amount of race entries. Despite the constant threat of Florida weather, with almost a 100% chance of rain forecasted, it did not rain at all and the program ran smoothly all day.
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Panther factory drivers Doug Nielsen and Justin Lew would be two men on a mission at Round 3 of the JBRL Electric series. Round 3 was held at Rainman’s Hobby & Raceway and Justin would TQ the heavily contested Pro 4 SC Class with teammate Doug Nielsen right behind him on the grid with both drivers having super consistent runs. In the A-main Justin got out of the gate fast, but a few mistakes was all it took for teammate Doug ‘Casper’ Nielsen to get around and take the win. Justin would finish right on his heels in 2nd place for a Panther Tires TQ 1-2 domination.
Source: Panther [panthertires.com]
The Electroliege club has put on their Grand Prix for several years now in Liege, Belgium, and this year they spent much time and effort improving the track and putting in a challenging new lay-out for the annual race. The dirt track featured several good sized jump sections this year. Practice was Sunday April 29, and the race was Tuesday May 1, a holiday in Belgium. It rained Monday night and the track was super-slippery as Tuesday dawned. Morning practice was non-existent, and there was just one qualifier. In these conditions, the slightest mistake was truly costly, and X Factory’s Bruno ‘Elvo’ Heremans drove carefully to second on the grid, just three seconds behind the X-6 Squared of privateer and TQ Martin Vierin, but 5 seconds clear of third. The track began to dry as the triple-A mains began, but was still quite slippery. Elvo pulled easily away from the field right from the start to take a 9 second win in A-1. Same story in A-2 as Heremans sealed up the Grand Prix trophy with another 9-sec win. Elvo also won A-3 to complete a dominating X Factory performance, TQ and all three mains.
Source: X-Factory [xfactoryrc.com]
Last weekend saw the first of 3 legs that makes up the 2012 Austrian nationals for 1:8 Offroad and it was held at the A-Team Graz race track attracting 110 entries. Mugen/Novarossi driver Dominic Bauer was the man of the weekend, winning all practice heats, 3 of 4 qualifier, the Semi final and most importantly the final. For second place there was a very close fight between Hupo Honigl, Martin Wollanka and Thomas Mayr which was finally decided by the better fuel mileage of Hupo in front of Martin and Thomas.
Source: Hoeco [hoeco.at]
