‘Trophy 98% mine’, Volker set for 3rd Reedy Race title

Ronald Volker is on target to claim a third Reedy Race of Champions title, the Yokomo driver declaring after finishing 2nd in the penultimate round of racing behind his only challenger Christopher Krapp that ‘the trophy is 98% mine’.  Having calculated that 2nd in Round 11 of 12 would be enough to take back the title he lost to Marc Rheinard last year, a win by Krapp means technically there is a chance his fellow countryman could win overall on tie break.  While the odds are heavily stacked against Krapp winning the iconic race on only his second attempt, if the Tamiya driver was to win and better Volker’s fastest winning time then he has a chance.  Declaring his win is ‘just technically not certain’, Volker did concede he does have ‘one hand on the trophy’.   In the other two races of the round Marc Rheinard won a somewhat fraught race in which he and Associated Juho Levanen clashed.  Expressing his frustration over the incident afterwards with the race referee, the win was an important one for the defending champion as it all but secures him a podium finish as team-mate Akio Sobue dropped back to fourth with a P3 finish in his race.  That same race would be won by Finland’s Viljami Kutvonen, the factory Awesomatix driver adding a second win to his tally as the rookie finished 1-second ahead of Ryan Cavalieri, who continues to be the top American at the Californian based event.

‘To get second in that last one released a lot of pressure off me’, was Volker’s reaction to the penultimate race of the 19th running of the world famous event that was originally created by Mike Reedy as a way to celebrate his birthday.  Describing the grid draw for his final race as ‘super tough’, he said his Round 11 result means all the pressure is on Krapp.  With his best time being a 25 laps in 5:03.595 compared to Krapp’s fastest win of 25 laps in 5:10.377, he added,  ‘I don’t think track conditions will allow for a quicker time’. Running through his latest race which he started 6th, he said, ‘I was very careful at the start not to get in any trouble and took my time working through the field’.  Running third behind pole starter Randy Caster, he said ‘with a couple of laps Randy made a mistake which gave me the position I needed’.

‘This one was again a perfect race’ said Krapp.  Starting third he would also run behind Caster for a few laps before a mistake from the Associated driver let him through.  Having crashed his Tamiya in the previous round when he hit the wall at the end of the straight after claiming the closest win of the event from Rheinard, Krapp said his TRF419X was tweaked from the incident and he had to trim it alot in the warm-up. With his TRF mechanic Kiyo Suzuki having checked over the car, he suspects it is the servo mount which has moved slightly and the car should be fine for the concluding race. Asked about the battle for second overall with Rheinard he said it seems pretty sure I will make the podium so I will just do my own race and see what happens’.  Rheinard has the disadvantage of  running in the toughest race as he faces Volker, Naoto Matsukura, Meen ‘Hercules’ Vejrak, Cavalieri and Viljami.

View our event image gallery here.