We received notification that the organisers of this summers 1/8th Off road EFRA GP in Norway, have opened the event for entries. The event will take place on the 18th – 19th of August this year and will be run by the Grenland Modellbilklubb on their track in Skien, 2 hours south of Oslo. It should be a good event and has already, even at this early stage, attracted over 35 entrants with some top names among those.
Check out their website here for more information.
Last week we wrote about Greek Serpent driver John Sotiropoulos and the fact that he got his 1/8th scale National title defense off to a good start with a win in the 1st round of the Nationals. Well John was at it again but this time its the first round of the 1/10th 200mm Nationals that took place again at the Arena track and as well as setting the fastest lap of the event, Sotiropoulos brought his Serpent 720 home to a commanding win with Spyros Piknis in 2nd and Dimitris Petroglou in 3rd.
Source: Serpent [serpent.com]
Current European 1:8 B Champion Andrea Cristiani has won the ‘Warm Up‘ race for the 2007 EFRA European 1:8 IC Track B Championships. Racing at Tolmin in Slovenia over the weekend (10/11 March), the Italian Serpent driver took the win by a narrow 4 second margin over 2007 EC-B title favourite Jernej Vuga from Slovenia who was Top Qualifier for the race.
The pace of racing at the ‘Warm Up’ event was ultra competitive with Cristiani and Vuga pushing each other throughout proceedings with local ace Vuga using his Mugen to set a new lap record time of 16.491 for Minitrack ‘Na Logu’. Italy’s Nicola Ometto, also driving a Mugen, completed the podium. As the current European 1:8 B Champion, Cristiani is not eligible to race in the 2007 EC-B on May 25-27 putting former EC-B Vice-Champion Vuga in a very strong position going into the Bonisio sponsored event.
Click here to see the final results… content
We briefly covered the ROAR Carpet Nationals that took place last weekend and frustratingly have still to find any images from the finals day, so i was happy when i stumbled upon this picture from SpeedMerchants press release celebrating their clean sweep at the event.
So happy, we’re going to run it… content
Not much information to go on here other than the results and the fact that the race took place last weekend in Thailand and was very well attended with some top drivers present including Japanese National Champion Kenji Osaka. The buggy race was won by Mugen/OS racer Daisuke Endo from Japan with fellow Japanese Mugen racer Yoshio Otsuka in 2nd and Mugen/Ninja ace Osaka in 3rd. In the truggy class it was Yuichi Ajishi who won from pole, having also TQ’d the buggy class but ran into difficulties in that race, Yoshio Otsuka finished in 2nd place ahead of Sin Dick San in 3rd.
Source: RC Mania [teamrcmania.com]
Last weekend saw the first round of the 2007 Spanish 1/8th scale National Championships held at the ARCA track in Madrid. The race effectively belonged to reigning Spanish National Champion Oscar Cabezas, who not only claimed pole position after qualifying, but also set the fastest lap in the heats and set a new track record in the final. On top of that the Serpent driver won the race ahead of Josue Artiles with Carlos Peracho in 3rd, getting the young SDD drivers title defense off to a perfect start.
Source: Serpent [serpent.com]
Last weekend saw the Norwegian Nationals take place on a large indoor track organised by the Spydeberg Motorklubb. In 19T it was young 13 year old Xray driver Adrian Berntsen who won 4 of the 5 qualifying rounds to take the TQ spot. In the race Adrien managed to carry forward his qualifying pace to win 2 finals to take the National title, despite huge pressure from fellow Xray racer Helge Johannessen who ended up 2nd with Tamiya racer Morten Bremsrud in 3rd. In the Modified class it Helge Johannessen managed to win all the qualfiying rounds to take the TQ spot ahead of Tamiya racer Eirik Andreassen and Adrian Bernsten. In the race it was even closer with Helge taking the win in final 1 with Eirik in 2nd while in final 2 these results were reversed meaning it all came down to the last final.
So in the third final Eirik and I went off with only 0.1sec between us. But I drove safely, and felt that I had full control from the start. After 2 minutes, Eirik’s car broke down, and I secured the win.
Read the full report here.
Source: Xray [teamxray.com]
Kyosho racer Mickaël Pontal has won the first round of the French 1/10th 200mm Nationals held last weekend at the Ampuis circuit, near Lyon. In Qualifying it was Picco powered Kyosho racer BA Arnaldi that took the top qualifying spot with team mate Sebastian Wartelle in 2nd and Xray racer Nicolas Bougnoteau in 3rd. In the final everything started well for Arnaldi who pulled out a strong lead but Mickaël Pontal only making pit stops every 6 minutes managed to catch Arnaldi whos tires were starting to wear. Soon Pontal could take the lead and with it the win, leaving Arnaldi to come home in 2nd with Wartelle in 3rd.
As we mentioned last week, the new EFRA engine regulations were causing some conflicts with whether they should be adopted this year or not, but it was finally decided that for an engine to be legal for racing this year it must conform to the 2006 EFRA rules. This ruling, which calls for a crankshaft with a 7mm inner diameter and with maximum chamfer of 0.5mm, would cause problems for the new GRP made .12 motors, which were only made to the 2007 EFRA regualtions. Despite that ruling there were Ninja engines present at the event, so they must have been able to manufacture a different crankshaft for the motors or found some other solution.
Source: RB Products [rbproducts.com] Image: Kyosho [kyoshofrance.com]
