Red RC

February 22, 2007

2007 Thailand International Touring Car Champs

TITC Marc Rheinard

This weekend sees the RC circus make their way to Thailand, fresh from the Snowbirds & Winternats in the case of Jilles Groskamp, to race the Thailand International Touring Car Championships, or TITC for short. This years event takes place at the Radio Control Speedway in Jadujag, Thailand and is sure to be a tough race for all involved as it has attracted all 4 IFMAR ITC World Champions as well as some of the best Asian and European racers (see entry lists here). Last years Mod race was won by Marc Rheinard and he is certain to be a favourite this year along with local favourite and winner of last years Stock class Surikarn C, but they first have to get their cars dialed in on the rubber tires and in the 40 degree C heat that is beating down on the track in practice.

Expect the heat to play a major role in who can win this event, as the track temperature is in the mid 50’s celcius, and when you consider that modern machinery is already struggling to get rid of the heat while racing indoors in cooler conditions you can expect to some heat related failures throughout proceedings. Qualfiying will start on Saturday, with the finals on Sunday and we hope to bring you some end of day updates as we get them.

For pictures from the event until now, you can go here, here and here.

Image: TITC [titc.in.th]

February 22, 2007

THS Racing TempDriver

I was looking briefly through this months RC Driver magazine and stumbled accross an advert for this, the TempDriver from THS Racing, and i thought it was interesting enough to have a closer look at. What is it? Well its a merging of two very essential tools, your temp gun and your long neck tuning screw driver. The handle is made from aluminium and contains the temperature gauge and its display whilst the other end is the screwdriver, simply point the handle at the motor as per normal, check the reading and adjust accordingly using the same tool. Is it better than two seperate tools, i dont know, it really depends on the quality of the product but its certainly thinking outside the box, and i like that.

Source: THS Racing [thsracing.com]

February 22, 2007

First Pictures – O’Donnell Buggy

O'Donnell Buggy

Ok, so we are not claiming to have the first pictures of the O’Donnell buggy but that these pictures we have here are the first of the buggy that Jared Tebo has helped develop along with the O’Donnell team. Whether this buggy would ever be finished has been questioned many times but now as you can see its near completion and R/C Car magazine have gotten the scoop and judging by the oversized watermark they have on all the photos, they are very proud of that fact and so they they should be. What you can see of the buggy, underneath the watermark, is a very refined and nicely finished buggy with C-hubs, carbon shock towers front and rear, very beefy suspension arms and the option of gold anodised machined shock towers, it looks good.

Hit more to see the full picture set… content

February 22, 2007

Nosram Matrix and Stealth Evolution

Nosram have released details of 2 of their newly released products which were first shown at the toy fair in Nuernberg. First up is the Matrix Evolution speed controller that works with both brushed and brushless motors, can automatically detect between NiMH and Lipo batteries and utilizes their new XP2 software as well as featuring some other internal upgrades over the previous version. Nosram have also released their new Stealth Evolution charger that can handle LiPo, NiMh and NiCd cells with charging currents ranging from 0.1A to 10.0A and on top of that functions as a top end discharger too. The unit itself features a red backlight LED display, has an autostarting function with times set between 0-99 minutes and it can store 3 charger or discharging profiles to suit your different preferences.

Source: Thunder Tiger [thundertiger-europe.com]

February 22, 2007

Helge Johannessen wins Norwegian National Cup

Helge Johannessen wins Norwegian Nationals

Xray have a report on their site from team driver Helge Johannessen who has done a write up from the 4th round of the indoor national cup series held 2 weeks ago in Trondheim at the Spectrum Sports Center. Johannessen set the TQ in both the modified and 19T classes ahead of fellow Xray racer Adrian Berntsen and went on to finish in those positions after all the finals were run. In winning both races in Helge took both National Cup titles.

You can read his full report here.

Source: Xray [teamxray.com]

February 21, 2007

Toni Rheinard confirmed to Hot Bodies

A short while back we wrote a piece about the fact that Toni ‘brother of Marc’ Rheinard may be upping and leaving Kyosho, a company that he had only raced with for a short time, well that is now confirmed. In pictures from this weeks TITC race in Thailand we can see that Toni is now racing for Hot Bodies, which is a good move for both parties, with Toni hopefully able to get the exposure and success that being a HB driver brings, and HB getting a very talented racer. ~~Hopefully somebody will stand him against a wall and get a picture of him in his HB gear but in the meantime we’ll have to make do with my dodgy compilation shots above~~.

UPDATE: Someone called his name and took his picture.

Images: Team Novi [teamnovi.blog.drecom.jp/]

February 21, 2007

First Pictures – Serpent 960 ’07 version

(Cick image to enlarge)

So we are very excited to bring you the first pictures of the new 1/8th scale for the 2007 season from Serpent, the 960 ’07. The car itself hasnt changed much from the previous car that won last years European A and B titles but it does have some nice optionals now included as standard. First off you notice that the car has a black anodised chassis plate, which is all about the looks, but then you see that it includes the aluminium front upper suspension brackets, servo saver with adjustable ackermann and it also comes as standard with front CVD’s, something customers have been asking for, for some time. We’re told that the car also has harder plastics throughout and will be stiffer, in particular in the drive train where the left sideplate is stronger and along with a redesigned left rear bearing block, eliminates flex in this area.

Click more to see more pictures… content

February 21, 2007

Xray on their NT1 debut

Xray on the NT1 debut

Although we already covered the Winternats I thought it was interesting to get an insight on how the Xray team felt they had performed, considering the hype surrounding the event and the debut of their new 200mm racer, the NT1. While the car definitely performed, it suffered from some off track problems when it mattered most such as poor pit stops as well as the problem that got Jilles Groskamp disqualified after the B-main, but they showed some good speed in the A-main but suffered major tyre wear problems as the track conditions on the finals day changed.

Despite using the harder tire compounds the tires were wearing more than expected and with only a few minutes remaining the rear tires on both Martin and Ralph’s cars wore down almost to the rims making the car more difficult to handle; in the last laps, both lost their 2nd and 3rd position respectively.

You can read the full report here.

Source: Xray [teamxray.com]