The second round of the popular WRS Championship was held last weekend at the popular Cassino track in Italy with the race also being the warm-up race for the upcoming Nationals. After snatching the TQ, recently signed Capricorn team driver Morgan Renzi took a convincing win ahead of Shepherd’s Antonio Calce and ARC’s Jonathan Gandin.
Source: Capricorn [capricornrc.com]
The Australian Model Off-road Buggy Club recently hold round 2 of the WA Challenge Cup. With some rain the few days before, the track was super wet and soft. Aaron Dexter had some mixed qualifiers, although due to the qualifying format using laps and time over points, he grabbed the overall TQ by 0.005 seconds over 36 laps. After the semis, that put Aaron P2 on the A-main grid behind Brady Piggot, both drivers had a good start on the tone and they pulled away from the field quickly. Soon Brady started to have a couple of mishaps which allowed Aaron to stretch the lead. A few mistakes here and there would drop his lead to as much as two seconds but Aaron managed to pull out to a 20-second lead before having a couple of silly mistakes again within the laps bringing 2nd place Kyle Francis closer than he would have liked. Nevertheless Aaron managed to win the 40-minute A-main by 13 seconds.
The fourth round of the French Nitro Buggy National Championship was held at Saint-Aubain-sur-Mer in the Normandy this past weekend. The dirt track held loads of bumps and dust, making it a real challenge for all drivers. Ultimately it was TLR’s Renaud Savoya who made the best out of the conditions, bringing home the TQ and win from Xray’s Jean-Pierrick Sartel in 2nd and TLR’s Jerome Sartel in 3rd. Eduard Hugon (Agama) and Jean Marc Lacheze (HB Racing) would round out the top 5 result.
Image: Jerome Sartel
Stateline R/C Raceway in Fremont, Indiana played host to the 2017 ROAR Fuel Off-road National Championship this past weekend. Mixed weather conditions made this challenging for both drivers and the organisers and in the premier Nitro Buggy class it was Xray’s Ty Tessmann who took the overall TQ honours courtesy of round wins in Q3 and Q4 while the only other round TQ holders, Team Associated’s Spencer Rivkin and Kyosho’s Jared Tebo had to settle for 2nd and 3rd respectively. In the finals things mixed up a bit with Tekno RC’s Ryan Lutz looking really fast but being a bit too inconsistent, this allowed Jared Tebo to take another national championship title, although after quite a winning drought at national-level events. Ryan Lutz had to settle for 2nd overall while defending champion, Spencer Rivkin completed the podium in 3rd after a great recovery following an early mistake.
Image: Kyosho [kyoshoamerica.com]
The final day of round 2 of the EFRA GP Series started off wet due to a huge overnight rain. Race director Ernesto Camponovo would delay the official start of the day until 10.00 as the rain stopped at about 9.00. Half an hour of practice was then used to clear the track and to allow the drivers to adapt to the new conditions with the race program continuing with the lower finals at 10.30. After the semis, Kyle Branson, Daniele Ielasi, Maximilian Vogl, Stefan Hanauer, Mattia Pesenti, Nicola Marrone, Marco Vanni and Louis Christophe would bump up to the main final that was completed by reigning IFMAR World Champion, Simon Kurzbuch and 9-times IFMAR World Champion, Lamberto Collari.
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Day two of round 2 of the EFRA GP Series in Lostallo, Switzerland again saw very warm weather with more than 30 degree Celsius and high humidity. The day saw five rounds of qualifying of which three counted and in 1/8th nitro on-road it was Simon Kurzbuch who excelled and who took a pretty dominant overall TQ. Following the qualifying the Superpole races were on with Lamberto Collari, Toni Gruber, Robin D’hondt and Kyle Branson battling for the second direct qualifying spot. Unfortunately Toni had mechanical issues and wasn’t able to take part is the Superpole race while Robin and Lamberto both were in the mix. Ultimately Collari would prevail, taking the runner-up spot with a 20.334 from D’hondt with a 20.363.
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The MRTM Lostallo track in Switzerland plays host to round 2 of the EFRA GP this weekend. Former home of three IFMAR World Championships as well as some EFRA Euros, the huge and fuel consuming track sets the stage for some competitive racing with 47 drivers attending in the 1/8th and 1/10th nitro classes. To the demeaning track conditions add high temperatures of about 34 degree Celsius which results in pretty high traction and in the 1/8th class it was Simon Kurzbuch (Shepherd/Novarossi) who set the early practice pace with a 1:00:150 for his best three consecutive laps. Some 0.429s down, Lamberto Collari (Infinity/O.S. M.Collari) is the only other driver to pull three laps with in the 1:00:00 range. Elsewhere in the 1/10th Touring class it is Germany’s Toni Gruber (WRC/Novarossi) who looks to be the man to beat so far with a 1:02:265.
Source: EFRA [efra.ws]
Round 3 of the Portuguese central division regionals was held at the Ortigosa track recently. Hot weather with ambient temperatures of about 40 degree Celsius made for challenging racing conditions and in the main final it was Helder Barros (TLR/Picco) who would prevail as he took the win from Ricardo Simao (Mugen/O.S.) in 2nd and Pedro Gomes (Xray/FX9 in 3rd.
