New in the Pits – Team Durango

Team Durango is at the European Championship with Hupo Hönigl, Gerd Strenge and British driver Kevin Brunsden to give the production prototype of the DNX408 1/8 scale nitro buggy its first major race outing. According to Strenge, who designed the buggy, they are running pretty much the final kit design here in Portugal and are now ready to go into production.

We have covered the car before on our site, but looking at the car up close, one of the neat features is the position of the receiver battery pack which routes underneath the rear centre dogbone rather that beside it or even in the front part of the chassis as seen on other buggies. This makes for very centralized weight distribution and helps make for agile handling characteristics. The super slim chassis design features wider and more inclined side pods than usual and the matching narrow body shell which appear much taller and sleeker than the average 1/8 scale body shell.

Talking to Stenge the team hasn’t got to terms with the challenging conditions of the Guarda track. According to Hupo the rutted surface makes it hard to find a good line, lap after lap, as a lot of the holes appear before you take off for jumps. After a difficult time in qualifying the 2009 finalist is confident that he can do better in the finals today as the conditions are the same for every driver and therefore chances are that the team can get it together and bump up into the Main race.

View our event image gallery here.