The annual KO Grand Prix was held at Greater LA RC in Gardena, California and in the 1/8th Expert class it was Mugen’s Takaaki Shimo who took the top qualifying honours. In the main final Takaaki would again excel to grab the day’s win and the 2016 title from Xray’s Mike Swauger.
Source: Mugen Seiki [mugenracing.com]
The sixth and final round of Czech 1/10th Buggy national championship was held this past weekend in Velke Opatovice. Saturday’s qualifying started out wet and it was Ales Bidovsky who made the best out of the changing conditions by taking the TQ from Xray team mate Kaja Novotny. In the 4WD class Kaja was a class of his own as he TQed all rounds to grab the overall TQ from Alex Bidovsky and Marek Schiller (PR).
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Round two of the Spanish GT Championship was held at the ARCA Circuito Grande track in several 1/8th GT classes including shaft-driven GT and belt-driven Super-GT categories. UK’s Glyn Beal made the trip over to Spain to race in the Nitro GT class in which he was a class of his own, taking the TQ for the 20-minute main final that he would eventually win in front of Toni Santana and Alberto Ibanez de Opacua in second and third respectively.
Source: Serpent [serpent.com]
The JITC Farewell race was held this past weekend with the 2-day event attracting drivers from Indonesia, Brunei, the UK, The Netherlands and Thailand to compete in several nitro on-road classes. In the 1/10th 200mm Nitro Touring category, Infinity’s Andy Moore would take the overall TQ and it would be Andy and his Infinity team mate Jilles Groskamp who would battle it out in the main final until eventual leader Jilles ran into trouble. This promoted Bowie Ginting (Serpent), who started from the 5 spot following many troubles on Saturday, into second place with Andy Moore bringing home the win while Bowie was able to take the runner-up spot from Trin Tanongsakchaikul (Infinity) in third.
The fifth and final round of the Swiss Electric On-road Championship was held at the Aigle track in the French speaking part of the country. In the Pro Stock qualifiers Noah Asendorf took TQs in three of the five rounds with Roger Krähemann and Roland Kupper also scoring round TQs. Overall Noah grabbed the pole position for the finals from Roger and Roland. In the triple A-mains Noah Asendorf (Xray) then took pretty easy wins to take the overall victory with one leg to spare with the last A-main being won by Giuliano Marra (Yokomo) who secured himself the runner-up spot from Marco Balmer (Team Magic). With the win Noah also took the Pro-Stock Swiss national title.
The German 1/8th Nitro On-road National Championships were held this past weekend at the AMC Hamm track. The qualification of the faster Class 1 was won by Mugen’s Robert Pietsch from John Ermen (ARC) and Michael Salven (Serpent) with Patrick Schäfer (Shepherd) and Steven Cuypers (Mugen) completing the top 5 result. The 45-minute main final then was a pretty close affair with the top 3 drivers being separated by only about 3 seconds on the finish line. Michael Salven would give Serpent’s new 977 Evo-2 a maiden national win with Steven Cuypers coming in second. In third ARC’s Lars Hoppe completed the top 3 podium result while TQ Robert Pietsch had to settle for 8th.
Source: Serpent [serpent.com]
Round four of this year’s BL-Cup was held at the Euregio off-road track in Hengelo, The Netherlands. Despite the nice and sunny weather only 29 drivers signed in for the event that was TQed by Bart Mullink from Sander van Genegten and Michael van Dijk. At the start of the main final Bart made an unusual error and dropped down the order but some four laps later he had already recovered to a podium position and he continued to gain places and on lap seven he was able to take over the lead from Sander and from that moment on he never looked back. Sander would bring home the runner-up spot from Michael who also had a bad start but he fought back, coming from as low as the ninth place, to grab the final podium spot from a chasing pack.
Thanks to Oscar Koot for the report.
Round three of the Spanish Nitro Buggy National Championship was held this past weekend at the San Jose track in Sevilla, Spain. A small and technical track with laptimes in the 30 seconds range and very little space to overtake made things interesting in the semis and the main final. The weekend started off with a dominating Robert Batlle that brought to everybody’s attention why he is a 10-times national champion. He absolutely smashed the qualifiers and took the overall TQ with one round to go, posting the exact same time in Q1 an Q2 to show his World-class skills and precision. Juan Carlos Canas, winner of the second round of the Nationals and reigning 1/8th Buggy Euro B champion, was the only driver that could almost-match Robert’s rhythm and consistency, although finishing 3 to 5 seconds off Batlle’s pace.
