Matsuzaki & Harper join Rheinard on World Championship podium
Hayato Matsuzaki and Elliot Harper have completed the podium here at the 2010 IFMAR World Championships, the two teenagers joining three time World Champion Marc Rheinard, who successfully defended his title with victory in the opening two legs. With Rheinard sitting out the third leg, it was Tamiya team-mate Jilles Groskamp that took a well deserved win to bring the bi-annual event to a close.
Having looked like he could take the fight to Rheinard after the challenge of pre-event favourite Ronald Volker fell apart in qualifying, Groskamp’s luck ran out in the final qualifier and that bad luck continued through in to the opening two finals. Despite winning an A-Main, poor results in the earlier races meant the European Champion leaves Burgdorf with a less than deserved 6th position, the Dutch ace having really looked strong in Practice and in 5 of the 6 qualifiers.
Finishing second and rewarding the huge efforts of Team Yokomo, Matsuzaki was the biggest surprise of the final. The Japanese Off Road star just made it into the final pipping former World Champion Andy Moore for the 10th spot. Finishing 8th in Leg 1 after an incident with Groskamp, he produced a stunning drive in Leg 2 to finish second. Not lacking confidence in his ability the 19-year-old said a repeat drive would be no problem and that is exactly what he produced to finish third, right on the bumper of team-mate Volker to become the Vice Champion. It was a very disappointing event for Volker, asked what had gone wrong the Warm-up Race Top Qualifier said the simple change of track direction left them struggling to get a car that wasn’t a handful to drive.
Despite messing up the third leg Harper, star of the 2008 Worlds, took the final step on the podium. Tied on points with Kyosho’s Christopher Krapp who finished fourth in the final leg, the English TRF driver got third overall thanks to his faster run from the opening leg in which he took second. Harper, who made the A-Main at the 1:12 Worlds earlier in the week, said he was so happy to make the podium, his personal goal being to just try and equal his fifth place finish from 2008.
Krapp was understandably very disappointed to have got so close to a podium finish on home soil. Running the new Kyosho TF6, he said that come tomorrow morning he will be very happy with the result but right now he feels hard done by after a clash with Harper on the first lap. The car’s designer Shin Adachi was very proud of his young team-mate saying the German really rose to the occasion at his home event and has put himself on the map as a world class driver.
So what has been an extremely hot World Championship has successful come to an end with the MAC Burgdorf doing a great job at hosting the event. We hope you enjoyed our coverage and thank our sponsors LRP, Speedpassion and Kyosho for making it possible. Special thanks also to our good friend Scotty Ernst for bringing great excitement to the event as only he knows how. The 2-year count down for all the teams to prepare for the sports biggest prize is already underway. We cant wait.
Final standings
1. Marc Rheinard (Tamiya TRF416) – 20pts
2. Hayato Matsuzaki (Yokomo BD5) – 17pts
3. Elliott Harper (Tamiya TRF416) – 15pts
4. Christopher Krapp (Kyosho TF6) – 15pts
5. Ronald Völker (Yokomo BD5) – 14pts
6. Jilles Groskamp (Tamiya TRF416) – 13pts
7. Yannic Pruemper (Yokomo BD5) – 13pts
8. Paul Lemieux (Xray T3) – 13pts
9. Alexander Hagberg (Xray T3) – 11pts
10.Viktor Wilck (Tamiya TRF416) – 9pts
Full results can be found here.
View our event image gallery here.