Just a quick heads up to say that the HPI Cyclone Moore-Speed edition has today been shipped from HPI in Japan. This is the car that was made to commemorate Andy Moores World Championship win in Italy this year and if you’ve ordered one you can now start doing a little celebratory dance.
You can read more about the car here.
Source: HPI Japan [hpiracing.co.jp]
Serpent have a report on their site celebrating the fact that they have won the 2006 Greek 1/8th scale championship. John Sotiropoulos claimed the title driving a Serpent 960 and benefitted from a bit of luck in the last round of the championship to have his main title rival John Arkoumanis fall out after he himself had problems.
With his main rival also encountering problems the RC Microracing driver worked his way back to fourth position enough to give him the winning margin in the standings over Kyosho driver John Arkoumanis. Backing up the strength of the Serpent 960/Mega package Vaggelis Papachristos took third overall in the championship standings.
You can read the full report here.
Source: Serpent [mytsn.com]
Although the race took place at the end of October, the report from the 2006 Singapore HPI Invitational Challenge 3 is only online now. Being hosted at the East Coast Park Raceway, the event attracted racers from all around South East Asia including Australia. After the race was over it was Alvin Koh who had gotten TQ and won the event ahead of Ong Chee Yong in second with 15 year old Nicolas Lee rounding off the podium.
Located at the center of Southeast Asia including Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand, Singapore is one of the best countries to host an international event. With TV crews and many spectators, the event made an exciting weekend for the whole nation. HPI was the main sponsor of the event, aiming at vitalizing the RC market in Singapore.
You can read the full report here.
Source: HPI Japan [hpiracing.co.jp]
Xray have just made the announcement on their site that 2005 European Champion and all round top racer Teemu Leino has left Schumacher, after racing for them for 12 years, and joined Team Xray. Teemu is a driver of considerable skill and experience and would be seen as the necessary move needed to enable the Slovakian manufacturer step up their game and take a European & World 1/10th title, which up till now has eluded them.
XRAY is very pleased to announce that the world’s top touring car driver and European Champion Teemu Leino will be joining Team XRAY. Teemu will support the factory team at all racing events and will participate in the testing and further development with the car.
Read the full announcement here.
Source: Xray [teamxray.com]
oOple.com is reporting, through images, on last weekends Batley Indoor Regional which saw wins for Ben Riley in 2wd and Paul Bradby in 4wd.
105 Drivers turned up to the second in the North East regional series, held at Batley Buggy Clubs indoor venue. The track was a mix of carpet, polished floor and gym mats – a real challenge.
View all the fantastic pictures from the event on oOple.com here.
Ok, we caught this news a bit late but hadn’t really seen it anywhere else and thought it still pretty significant considering the level of racer that Mike Dumas is, so here it is. The American Xray racer has signed to race Tekin products and to help with product R&D and in his first run for his new sponsor, at the recent Halloween Classic, he TQ’d and won the Touring 19T class and then got 4th in Touring modified at the same event.
Mike Dumas one of the fastest mod drivers in Touring car has joined Team Tekin. Mike will add his talent as well as his R&D Skills in helping Tekin continue to develop new product for the RC Market.
Source: Tekin [teamtekin.com] via Big Squid RC [bigsquidrc.com]
Just last weekend, the GS Cup for off road was held in Malaysia and attracted a large attendance. In the main buggy final it was Scott Yang driving a GS that took the win ahead of 2nd place finisher Ah M with a Hong Nor and David Lim with a Kyosho back in 3rd. The truggy class was won by Hengster with a Hong Nor followed by Ah Leng with his GS in second and just ahead of fellow GS racer Pegan who finished 3rd.
View the final results after the jump… content
At last weekends ROAR (US governing body) meeting it seems a rule was passed that outlawed the use of LiPo batteries in all R/C cars that run at ROAR sanctioned events. Although not stated, the reason was probably down to the safety issues with these batteries having been known to explode if not charged and handled properly. This is unfortunate as the benefits of LiPo are clear (weight, size, longer runtime) but i think this move was more a case of covering ROAR’s ass in the event of an injury brought on by an exploding LiPo. The move however seems a bit extreme as danger is present in all forms of RC racing, particularly burns and cuts and the mis-use or bad treatment of any power sources will always result in an injury.
The ruling however does not just affect Electric class racers but also gas racers who have installed LiPo cells to power their receiver. The judgment makes no differentiation between uses of the cells, but instead just bans their usage in all classes outright.
From the minutes of the meeting:
A proposal to outlaw Lithium Polymer batteries in all r/c vehicles was discussed. This item was adopted.
You can read the full minutes of the meeting here (PDF).
