Bloomfield, Howells & Floris enjoy ROC wins
As part of the Arena Offroad Meeting, Saturday night at the Cowboy’s Guest Ranch was time for the ‘Race of Champions’. Open to the Top 16 qualifiers in Truggy and both the F1 & F2 Buggy classes, this year’s format was to prove entertaining for the decent crowd of onlookers. Lining up in reverse grid order the first stage of the ROC was to reduce the field in a regular race by eliminating the car running in last position every two minutes until four remained. With four remaining the winner of the first stage of the process drew a number to determine which of the Top 4 he would go head to head with in a three lap sprint, the winner of which would progress to the 5 lap final against the winner of the other duel, while the defeated drivers would go up against each other to determine the final step of the podium.
First up was the Truggy Race of Champions which saw TLR driver Walter Floris get the better of French Mugen driver Julien Lattanzio to secure a very popular home victory. Winner of the Truggy Main earlier in the day Yannick Aigoin, who was ROC winner in both Truggy and Buggy at the last running of the Arena Offroad Meeting, had to settle for third with Ryan Lee of event sponsor Sweep tires fourth.
The F2 Buggy class was next up with Austrian Gerd Pfeifer winning the first stage of the competition and in the first duel held off promising 12-year-old talent Alessandro Remia to go into the final against Britain’s Jon Howells who fended of Austrian Reinhold Gruber. Howells went on to claim the ROC victory after Pfeifer had a number of moments.
In the main Buggy class the shoot out was an all TLR affair. In the draw Darren Bloomfield was pitted against Aigoin for his opening duel which was to be the closest battle of the night. The buggy Top Qualifier eventually took the win and came up against 16-year-old Alex Zanchettin who got the better of Italian National Champion Riccardo Rabitti. Zanchettin put it up to factory driver with the pair rubbing tyres on a number of occasions but in the end the British Champion would take the win to bring to a close what was a busy night.
Buggy Result
1.(1) Darren Bloomfield – TLR/Nitrotec
2.(6) Alex Zanchettin – TLR/BP
3.(3) Riccardo Rabitti – TLR/Picco
4.(2) Yannick Aigoin – TLR/nVision
Truggy Result
1.(2) Walter Floris – TLR/Novarossi
2.(4) Julien Lattanzio – Mugen/Picco
3.(1) Yannick Aigoin – TLR/nVision
4.(6) Ryan Lee – TLR/Alpha
Buggy F2 Result
1.(2) Jon Howells – Hobao/RB
2.(9) Gerd Pfeifer – Durango/OS
3.(3) Reinhold Gruber – Mugen/Novarossi
4.(7) Alessandro Remia – LRP/LRP
View the event image gallery here.