Red RC Events » Drivers

January 8, 2016

Orlowski tops 2WD practice at DHI Cup

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Michal Orlowski has topped 2WD Buggy practice at the DHI Cup, the Schumacher driver setting the fastest 3-consecutive laps at the Danish event to end up almost half a second clear of former winner Tom Cockerill. Joakim Nicolaisen would complete the Top 3, Team Associated’s up & coming talent 3/100ths faster than defending champion David Ronnefalk. For two time 2WD winner & unbeaten 4WD Champion Joern Neumann practice would leave the Serpent driver only 9th fastest while Xray’s 4WD World Champion Bruno Coehlo, despite laying down the fastest single lap ended up 16th.

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Qualifying and finishing third in 2WD last year in Odense, Orlowski said although he came into the event prepared for low grip it was ‘even lower’ than expected. Initially struggling for the first three practice runs, his KF2 SE ‘sliding around’, he said a switch from 15 to 10k rear diff oil together with a shortened rear camber link ‘helped a lot’ leaving the car ‘really good’ for the fourth & final practice. Surprised that the track layout is almost identical to that of last year, the Polish ace feels he is now in good shape for qualifying which for 2WD will take place tonight following 4WD practice.

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‘Pretty good’ was how 2014 winner, then driving for Schumacher, was how Cockerill summed up his practice. Having not attended last year’s event, Yokomo’s lead driver this weekend as Lee Martin has nitro racing commitments, said while the traction was low for carpet it was nice adding it ‘should make for better racing’. Using the practice to bed in sets of the event’s Schumacher handout tyre, the only big change in terms of set-up was with shock oils as he tries to find more steering on what he described as an ‘understeer track’. Describing the times of the leading drivers as ‘close’ he added ‘a lot of drivers are on a similar pace and there also making a lot of mistakes so my focus is more on my driving’.

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Nicolaisen said his B5M, which features a Swedish made laydown gearbox, has been very good from the first run on the track. Making only very small changes over the four rounds, the Norwegian said the track time was mostly used to scrub in tyres. Describing the layout as having ‘a good flow’, he said as he is pretty happy with the car he will focus on his driving feeling he could clean up his lines a bit.

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Making his HB team debut at the event last year, but having to race a Team C chassis in 2WD with which he TQ’d and won, Ronnefalk is now running HB’s D216. The Swede said ‘we have done quite a lot of practice since the EOS and we now have a machined chassis rather than the rapid prototype we ran in Slovakia’. He added ‘with not as much traction as EOS this suits the car. The speed is there. I just need to make it a little easier to drive over 5-minutes.’ Behind Ronnefalk fellow countrymen David Hassel and Niclas Mansson completed the Top 6 with Xray’s Martin Bayer 7th fastest.

View the event image gallery here.

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January 8, 2016

Track Focus – DHI Cup Odense

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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 – 15 (Onroad), 4 (Offroad)

It might be the 16th running of the DHI Cup but Denmark’s most famous race is continuing its resurgence with this year’s event taking just 20-minutes to book out. A unique event in that both onroad and offroad run simultaneously on back to back tracks, even increasing the entry limit from 300 to 320 left the organisers to have to turn away drivers. Allocated 90 of the 160 Touring Car entries, Super Stock inparticular couldn’t cater for the large number of racers looking to travel to Odense. In Offroad, the organisers said they were surprised by the huge interest 4WD Buggy attracted this year with the class well oversubscribed.

Having had to move to a different hall in the Odense Congress Center last year due to a World Championship warm-up handball game, handball a big sport in Denmark, this year the event returns to the impressive Stadium Arena Fyn. Getting access to such a facility comes thanks to the city of Odense. The third largest in Denmark, the city provided the funding for the building of the Arena and as part of the deal a select number of days are made available for local organisations such as the host Odense R/C Minirace club to host events. The DHI Cup setting up home here in 2008 with Viktor Wilck marking the occasion with his first big international race win.

In terms of the onroad track, it is defending six time champion Ronald Volker who was asked to design this year’s layout. While the construction of the track turned out a little different to the plans he submitted, the Yokomo driver said the chicane in front of the drivers stand is the tracks key feature. ‘Somewhere to make or lose time’, the German said ‘the biggest difference more than the layout’ is the carpet and the controlled LRP tyres. With the ETS style black carpet now very common throughout Europe, the use of grey carpet gives a somewhat retro look to the track. One significant but out of sight change to the track is steel plates that have been added under the carpet. As with most exhibition halls, cable tunnels run the length of the hall and previously have caused issue in particularly on the straight as the bump unsettles cars. With the plates running over the tunnels Volker said they were ‘an improvement’ and now they ‘didn’t feel too bad’.

Unbeaten in 4WD Buggy since the event took on the challenge of running adding offroad to the event in 2012, Joern Neumann was happy with the track layout. ‘Its 95% same as last year and I won on that so the layout is OK’. His first DHI outing with Serpent, having won last year with Durango, the German said ‘some parts are tricky but overall there is a good flow to the layout’.

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May 24, 2015

Krapp moves into contention for RROC title

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Contesting his first Reedy International Touring Car Race of Champions at the famous Tamiya Raceway in California, Christopher Krapp got the final day underway with an important win that puts the Tamiya driver in contention for the overall win at the 18th running of the event. His fourth win from 9 races, the result was made even more significant because the same round would see overnight points leader Marc Rheinard and defending champion Ronald Volker post their worst results so far. In the other two races, Tamiya’s Akio Sobue notched up a second win ahead of Viktor Wilck while former 200mm World Champion Ralph Burch claimed a popular first win of the event.

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Krapp said it ‘feels really good to start the day with a win’. The win over Meen Vejrak and Ryan Cavalieri, ‘opens everything up again’ and having ended Day 2 third in the points table that moved the German up to second just one point behind TRF team-mate Marc Rheinard. Another cold morning, Krapp said his Orion powered TRF419 was a little edgy for the day’s opening race but should, like yesterday, the sun come out he is confident he will have a good car for the remaining three rounds of racing. Running in the same heat as Krapp, Rheinard described his race as ‘horrible’. Starting from 7th on the grid, the 4-time champion was battling with Nicolas Lee for fourth but with three laps to go he would clip the curbing through the sweeper launching his TRF419 into the fencing leaving the German to finish 9th.

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Racing in the same heat that would be won by Sobue, Volker said that starting from last he had to be ‘very patient’. Up to 5th after the first minute, the ETS Champion was running behind World Champion Naoto Matsukura and HB’s JJ Wang but when the pair clashed he too got caught up in the incident losing him time. While he would catch up to third placed Alexander Hagberg he said he ‘couldn’t get by’ the Xray driver. Having to settle for 4th which drops him to third in the standings he said now the only way he was going to defend his title was if both Krapp and Rheinard had bad results the next one. Starting from his first pole position for the 10th round, he said with Rheinard in the same race it’s going to be an important one to win.

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Starting Race 2 from the pole, RC America boss Ralph Burch was clearly happy to post a win at the Reedy Race. The Texan said he made a good start and was able to get away quickly, his winning margin being a massive 6-seconds. Taking his Xray T4 to the fastest lap of the round, he said while it was ‘not the most comfortable to drive’ it has been really quick throughout the event but he hasn’t had good starts and when he did he ‘took (himself) out’. Unfortunately his chance of a repeat win will be limited due to his starting positions for the rest of the day, him starting last in 2 of them.

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January 9, 2015

Prumper tops opening practice at DHI Cup

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Yannic Prumper topped the opening round of timed practice at the 15th running of DHI Cup in Denmark. The Team Yokomo driver headed a very closely matched Top 6 over 3-consecutive laps with Serpent’s Marc Fischer second fastest just 0.054 off his fellow German’s pace. Defending champion Ronald Volker, who is chasing a sixth DHI Cup title this weekend, completed the Top 3 with his Yokomo just 0.003 off Fischer.

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Having posted only the 7th fastest time in free practice, Prumper put his improvement down to a bodyshell switch and a change of tyres. Without his regular mechanic Toni Rheinard, the 21-year-old went from Protoform’s Speed 6 to LTC-R bodyshell which together with fitting a new set of the event’s controlled LRP tyre gave him more steering. Happy with how his BD7 is running now he plans to run the car unchanged for the final practice.

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Finishing free practice just one place ahead of Prumper, Fischer also attributed his improved form down to changing to a new set of tyres. Describing the second set as ‘much better’, for the final practice he plans to run softer shocks on his S411 to see if it improves the car over the bumps caused by cable tunnelling underneath the track. While he described the track layout as ‘a little boring’, he added the that ‘it is good that everyone is so close’.

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Volker, who has made carpet racing somewhat boring due to his domination of events, described the practice as being ‘super close between a lot of drivers’. The ETS & European Champion was very happy with his 5-minute pace but added that they need to make some small changes to his LRP powered BD7 to make it a little easier to drive which would allow him to push just a little harder.

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Making his debut for HB, Freddy Sudhoff was very happy with his early pace. Setting the fourth fastest time, he ‘thought it was a pretty good start’ with his new car. The former Awesomatix driver said the nature of the shaft driven Russian car meant he had to drive it more aggressively through corners than a belt car and he thought this was going to affect his performance this weekend but the track layout requires even a belt car like his new PRO5 to being driven hard and that’s helping with the switch. Overall he said the basic set-up of the new car is really good and he is pleased to be in the mix so early on in his first race with it.

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Setting the 5th fastest time, Alexander Hagberg declared himself content with his early form describing the leading times as ‘very close’. The Xray driver, said they were still working on a ‘couple of details’ on the T4 set-up and everything should be fine come qualifying.

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Completing the Top 6 was Awesomatix’ now lead driver Vijami Kutvonen. The Finn who was runner up to Volker here last year, said he is just really waiting for the traction to come-up. With the bumps an issue for most drivers, for the first timed practice he fitted a top deck to his A700 which he said improved the impact the bumps had on the car alot.

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Last years other podium finisher Marc Rheinard would top free practice but could only manage 8th behind Martin Lissau in the first timed run. Very happy with the stability of his TRF419 in free practice he said having started out good the car was ‘now not so good’. ‘Sliding all over the place’ he said having done nothing to the car between the two runs he hopes that a fresh set of tyres for the closing practice run will return the car to how it was earlier.

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January 10, 2010

Volker takes first A-Main

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Team Yokomo’s Ronald Volker has taken victory in A-Main Leg 1 here at the 10th Anniversary DHI Cup after a thrilling climax to the opening race. Initially it looked as though Top Qualifier Christer Andersson was checking out and that the big battle of the race would be for second but in the final minute the Associated driver caught a dot flipping his TC5. This allowed Volker to take the lead as the No.1 car resumed in second spot just in front of defending champion Marc Rheinard. Nothing separated the trio as Andersson challenged for the lead and defended from Rheinard at the same time. In the end Volker held his nerve to take the win with the Top Qualifier taking second as he and Rheinard touched crossing the finish line. Coming from last on the grid Martin Hudy took fourth just ahead of Xray team-mate Leino.

Volker said the race was how he expected with the top four cars very closely matched on pace, Teemu Leino having also been part of the battle until he rolled his Xray. The German said the technical design of the track made it difficult to pass but he was very happy to open his account with a win. Andersson said he gave away the race but plans to look forward for the second leg. Having pulled a comfortable gap the 18-year-old said he saw Volker was closing and reacted by pushing too hard resulting in his costly mistake. Rheinard said the race was OK but thinks winning from 3rd is going to difficult unless someone in front crashes.

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In Pro Stock Alexander Stocker converted his pole position start in to a light to flag victory but he was made work very hard for it by defending champion Tommy Bergfeldt. Having decided to start with a fresh set of LRP CPX tyres, Stocker said his Cyclone was loose for the opening few laps as the new rubber bedded in and only for an error by Bergfeldt he was struggling to hold the lead. Dropping back almost 2 seconds after missing his apexes just before the main straight, the Swede stormed back with his Red Bull sponsored Hot Bodies closing the gap down to just 5/10th by the finish. A great race from Tony Streit saw him come from starting last on the grid to finish third.

Modified A-main Leg 1 results
1. Ronald Völker – 20 Laps in 5:09.119
2. Christer Andersson – 20 Laps in 5:09.771
3. Marc Rheinard – 20 Laps in 5:09.802
4. Martin Hudy – 20 Laps in 5:13.308
5. Teemu Leino – 20 Laps in 5:13.720
6. Steen Graversen – 20 Laps in 5:14.173
7. Alexander Hagberg – 20 Laps in 5:14.429
8. Freddy Südhoff – 20 Laps in 5:15.654
9. Yannic Pruemper – 20 Laps in 5:16.376
10.Marc Fischer – 14 Laps in 3:43.580

>Pro Stock A-main Leg 1 results
1. Alexander Stocker – 19 Laps in 5:07.217
2. Tommy Bergfeldt – 19 Laps in 5:07.798
3. Tony Streit – 19 Laps in 5:14.543
4. Henry Salmén – 18 Laps in 5:02.393
5. Ola Westholm – 18 Laps in 5:03.099
6. Thomas Larsen – 18 Laps in 5:08.877
7. Daniel Horn – 18 Laps in 5:10.222
8. Bastian Hennig – 18 Laps in 5:10.625
9. Carsten Madsen – 18 Laps in 5:14.299
10.Yukijiro Umino – 2 Laps in 0:26.930

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January 9, 2010

Andersson on pole for 10th Anniversary DHI Cup

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Having just signed a new contract with Team Associated last week Finnish star Christer Andersson has opened his new term with the American company in the best way possible by claiming the Top Qualifier spot at the opening international touring car race of 2010, the 10th Anniversary DHI Cup. The 18-year-old claimed his third consecutive international pole position start when he backed up his Q2 and Q4 TQ runs with second in the final qualifier behind Ronald Volker. His third time to qualify for the A-Main of the prestigious Danish event, Andersson said he is really pleased with the result which he sees as just reward for the hours of development work he has put into the TC5 over the past 12 months. Having achieved a best result of seventh here last year he says he is pretty confident about his prospects for tomorrow’s finals as his retires for the night knowing he is the fastest man around this technical track over five minutes thanks to his Q4 run.

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Having improved his pace with each outing today, Team Yokomo’s Ronald Volker ended the day on a high by topping the final round of qualifying. The result will see the German line-up second on the grid and considering how the day started out he said he is very happy with the result and encouraged by the progress his team made today in getting a good set-up on his LRP powered BD5. The 2007 Winner admitted that in the later stages of Q5 Andersson was faster but says he is still confident that he can challenge for Yokomo’s first DHI Cup win tomorrow.

Despite managing only 11th in the last qualifier defending champion Marc Rheinard will start third on the grid, but the German doesn’t appear overly confident about becoming the first driver to stand on the top step of the DHI Cup podium three times. Making it four different manufacturers at the sharp end of the grid Teemu Leino, who TQ’d the opening round, will line up fourth for Team Xray followed by local hope Steen Graversen and Yannick Prumper. One man to watch tomorrow is ‘Fast’ Freddy Südhoff who set another fastest lap in the last qualifier with a 15.702. The German starts eight just behind last years Top Qualifier Alexander Hagberg. Completing the grid is factory Corally driver Marc Fisher and Xray’s Martin Hudy.

A number of big name drivers didn’t have a good day in the office and will find themselves unusually low down the field. In contrast to their team-mates Associated’s Juho Levanen, a former winner of the event, will start sixth on the grid in the B Main two places ahead of another former winner Viktor Wilck. Factory Hot Bodies driver and former World Champion Andy Moore finds himself in the C Main along with current 1:12 World Champion Naoto Matsukura.

Modified overall qualifying results
1. Christer Andersson – 4pts (Associated/LRP)
2. Ronald Völker – 5pts (Yokomo/LRP)
3. Marc Rheinard – 5pts (Tamiya/Speedpassion)
4. Teemu Leino – 7pts (Xray/Team Orion)
5. Steen Graversen – 12pts (Tamiya/Team Orion)
6. Yannic Pruemper – 15pts (Tamiya/Speedpassion)
7. Alexander Hagberg – 16pts (Xray/LRP)
8. Freddy Südhoff – 18pts (Xray/LRP)
9. Marc Fischer – 24pts (Corally/GM)
10.Martin Hudy – 27pts (Xray/LRP)

View the full Modified qualifying standings here.

Pro Stock overall qualifying results
1. Alexander Stocker – 3pts (Hot Bodies)
2. Tommy Bergfeldt – 5pts (Hot Bodies)
3. Henry Salmén – 9pts (Tamiya)
4. Thomas Larsen – 10pts (Tamiya)
5. Yukijiro Umino – 13pts (Yokomo)
6. Ola Westholm – 15pts (TOP)
7. Carsten Madsen – 15pts (Tamiya)
8. Daniel Horn – 19pts (Xray)
9. Bastian Hennig – 23pts (Xray)
10.Tony Streit – 24pts (Hot Bodies)

View the full Pro Stock qualifying standings here.

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