Defending champion Aigoin tops opening Arena qualifier

Having taken a year out so as to avoid a clash with last November’s 1:8 Offroad World Championships in Thailand, Italy’s leading international offroad event is back and has taken over from the cowboys again with defending champion Yannick Aigoin opening qualifying with TQ runs in both Buggy and Truggy. The third running of the Offroad Meeting at the Arena Rodeo ring, which is situated 1- hours drive south of Milan, the two biggest changes to the indoor event are the weather and new title sponsorship from Sweep tyres. Two years ago drivers had to brave the cold but this weekend milder weather are making for much more comfortable conditions at what is a great place to hold an r/c event as the facility has its own hotel, restaurant and bar.

Defending champions TLR Racing, who also won the 1:8 Brushless class last time round with Riccardo Rabitti, are here in force in Voghera with three of their newly crowned 2011 National Champions. Along with French and Italian Champions Aigoin and Rabitti, the team have also brought along British Champion Darren Bloomfield. Bloomfield’s first time at the Arena, he is very impressed by the venue and got his morning off to a strong start to top Brushless Buggy from Mugen’s Simon Willets after two rounds of qualifying. Running LRP electrics in his 8ight E for first time, having just got them while he waited on his flight to Italy from the UK, Bloomfield said the power delivery from the IX-8 Speedo and new Dynamic 8 motor are really nice which is allowing him to push harder than he could with the now discontinued Xcelorin 1:8 Brushless system which was sensorless.

Aigoin was pleased with his opening run despite all the top drivers finding the conditions difficult following overnight work to track which made for very low traction. Happy with his N-vision powered 8ight and 8ight-T in practice yesterday the French ace said he expects the traction to come up again and so for now will not make any set-up changes. With little competition in Truggy this year Aigoin said he expects the buggy race to provide the main excitement. With this year’s track layout design less challenging than previous years, Aigoin said the easier track should make for much closer racing. Expecting tough competition from his TLR team-mates, with Bloomfield and Rabitti 2nd & 3rd fastest respectively in Q1, he also expects Elliot Boots to be in the mix come the finals.

Having departed Team Durango following the European Championship at which he made the final, the Team RB driver is currently out of contract with a chassis manufacturer and so is running a borrowed Kyosho this weekend. The MP9 is that of Kyosho Europe’s Mick Cradock and the multiple 40+ European Champion has made the trip to Italy to pit for the former European Junior Champion. A finalist here in 2009, Boots said he is really happy with his buggy on which he is running a Bittydesign’s Force body for the first time. Really liking the new shell design he said it helps ‘hook’ the corners better.

Along with Willets, Mugen Seiki have brought along former French Champion Julien Lattanzio and young up & coming French talent Guillaume Hebert who is the current National B Champion.  Running a number of new parts on the MBX6 here in Italy, which are expected to be released as part of a new edition of the European Championship winning chassis, Willets was happy with the new bits in practice yesterday but said the conditions this morning were very different and he just tried to put in a steady run which was good enough for the 4th fastest time, 5 seconds adrift of Aigoin’s TQ time.

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