Track Focus – DHI Stadium Arena Fyn

Host Club – Odense R/C Minirace
Country – Denmark
Location – Odense
Venue – Stadium Arena Fyn
Track type – Temporary
Surface – Carpet (Onroad), Carpet & Wood (Offroad)
Direction – Anti-Clockwise (Onroad), Clockwise (Offroad)
Previous races hosted – 14

An event that has become the traditional international season opener for electric touring car, this year is the 14th running of the famous Danish event.  Created by Kim Moldt Bendiksen who named the event after his r/c business Dansk Hobby Import (DHI), the first event took place in 2001 when it was won by now AME/ORCA frontman Andreas Myrberg.  Starting out more as a club race in a small hall, the event quickly established itself with international teams and drivers with an impressive list of past winners that includes three World Champions – Atsushi Hara, Jilles Groskamp and Marc Rheinard.  Moving to its current location in 2008, the impressive Stadium Arena Fyn, the event has since doubled up with 1:10 Electric Offroad being added in 2012.  The running of the two different categories has resulted in the creation of a rather unique temporary track by the Odense R/C Minicar Club, drivers sharing the driver’s stand standing back to back as they run on their respective onroad or offroad tracks.

A club of around 55 members, they are normally found racing outdoors in the Summer just 5-minutes from the Arena while for their Winter club racing the have a hall they use for both onroad and offroad 20-minutes away.  Acquiring such an impressive and large venue, that would under normal circumstances be prohibitively costly to rent for an r/c event the club in fact gets free use of the venue.  With the city of Odense, the third largest in Denmark, providing funding for the building of the Arena part of the deal is that a select number of days are made available for local organisations such as the r/c club to hold events.

While initially the event was run by Kim, as the event grew each year so did the input of the Odense club who would eventually take over the full organisation of the event.  With the DHI title having become so established with drivers & teams the club have maintained the name. Headed by Ulrich Rasmussen, it takes a crew of around 25 volunteers to build the double track set-up.  The addition of offroad to the event came about after a slow down in touring car entries and 2014 is looking like a come back event with both events attracting a good international entry.

In terms of the track layouts defending offroad champion Joern Neumann described the layout of the medium sized track as nice but after early practice the Durango driver said the traction is loose particularly on the black coloured carpet sections compared with the traditional grey indoor racing carpet jumps.  The driver with the most DHI wins in Touring Car, having won the title first in 2007 and then three years in a row from 2010, Ronald Volker described the track as ‘fast and flowing’.  The Yokomo ace said the layout is ‘maybe a little too wide open’ but that should make for close racing.  In terms of traction he said based on previous experience of the event he expects it to be ‘high’.

A DHI Cup fact – 5 drivers have contested all 14 DHI Cups.  Two of those are two of Denmarks top former international drivers Steen Graversenn and former European Touring Car Champion Jonas Kaerup.  The other three drivers never to have missed a year of racing are Soren Jeppesen, Soren Boy Holst and Jens Otte Frederiksen.

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