Lower finals complete, 56 remain

Following some rather freak weather conditions which caused flooding in the centre of Buenos Aires yesterday and the cancellation of the final round of qualifying Day 7 of the 1:8 Offroad World Championships was a sunny dry affair allowing the lower finals to be run.  While local TV last night reported 115mm of rain had fallen in one hour, covering the track prior to the wet conditions appears to have been effective as along with the spreading of a lot of wood shavings after, the first of the finals got underway just after midday.

The day ended with the running of the 1/16 Finals from which 8 drivers would progress to the big day.   The first of the 20-minute encounters was the 1/16 A final which would be won by A-Main Hobbies team driver Chad Bradley who had bumped up from the previous 1/32 A final.  Bradley took his Mugen to a comfortable win, 12-seconds clear of team-mates Marty Korn and Curtis Door.  The final driver to secure his pass through to tomorrow was Portuguese Xray driver Nuno Rebelo who finished just head of former multiple finalist Richard Saxton whose event has come to an end.

In the 1/16 B Final, the last race of the day, Team Durango’s Joern Neumann took his prototype Durango to the win 7-seconds ahead of the TLR of former World Champion and AKA co-owner Mark Pavidis.  While the 2006 Champion bumped up the same race would be the end of the event for past World Champions Greg Degani and Yuichi Kanai who had bumped up from the 1/32 B Final.  The final two drivers to make up the 56 drivers who remain in the event were French Mugen driver Nicolas Reynaud who was the winner of the 1/32 final and former European Champion Dani Vega.

View our event image gallery here.