November 11, 2012

Hara leads the way in Thailand

Making their 1:10 Nitro Touring Car World Championship debut, it is Team HB and Atsushi Hara who lead the way on the second day of free practice at the very well presented RC Addict track in Bangkok, Thailand.  The Japanese star, who now lives in Thailand and has his own pitroom overlooking the track, set the fastest three consecutive laps in the second of the day’s four scheduled 15-minute practice runs to head KM Racing’s Dario Balestri who had set the pace in the morning’s opening practice.  The fifth running of the bi-annual IFMAR event, this is the first occasion that the reigning champion will not travel to defend their title, a broken hand which is in cast forcing Ralph Burch to withdraw his entry.

Hara was happy with his pace saying his OS powered R10 is working really well and it is a credit to designer Miyashita who joined HB from Kyosho just over a year ago.  Having not raced 1:10 nitro for almost 9-years, when he then drove the HPI Racing R40, he said the modern 1:10 nitro car needs to be driven with a lot more aggression similar to that of a 1:8 Onroad car, a style that is totally different to electric touring car which he said he uses the most at this track as part of his regular testing for Team HB.  Impressed by Balestri’s improvement on pace today over yesterday, Hara believes that his biggest challenge is going to be fellow electric touring car ace and newly crowned World champion Jilles Groskamp.  He said the Dutchman, who was fastest at the end of yesterday’s four rounds of practice, doesn’t just have good pace but more importantly knows how to win titles as he found out first hand when he finished runner-up to the Tamiya driver at the Electric World Championship’s which where held on Groskamp’s original home track just outside Amsterdam although having relocated to Bangkok a few years ago RC Addict is now also his home track.

Backing up the potential of the R10, Teemu Leino set the third fastest time while Andy Moore managed 7th.  Leino, who like fellow countryman Kimi Raikkonen prefers to just get on with the job in hand rather than talk about it, said he is still playing around with small set-up adjustments but having traveled to Thailand for two days of testing with his LRP powered example of the R10 he is confident that they have a very competitive car.  The 2006 Electric Touring Car World Champion, Moore was very happy with his pace in yesterday’s practice with today’s runs focusing on running various Maxima engines ahead of having them marked for tomorrow’s three controlled practice rounds which will determine the seeding for qualifying on Tuesday.  The British driver also ran two different chassis today saying the first car was better and it is this one he plans to race.  Having only properly raced nitro once before when he debuted the R10 at the European Championship back in August, the British ace again has the car’s designer Miyashita as his mechanic with Andy’s only job between runs being the saucing of tyres, something he said he could get very used to.

Having shown yesterday that he has a good qualifying set-up for his Maxima powered Capricorn when he topped the time sheets along with setting the outright fastest lap, Groskamp switched his attentions today to working on his set-up for later in the week.  Running larger diameter tyres in each of his 15-minute runs the 2008 World Championship Top Qualifier tried a finals set-up and was pleased that he was still able to set the 14th fastest time just ahead of 2006 World Champion Keisuke Fukuda.  Joining Groskamp at Capricorn is his Tamiya electric Touring Car team-mate Marc Rheinard.  A podium finisher in Texas, this is the German’s third time to contest the nitro Worlds.  Having struggled with the handling yesterday his mechanic & brother Toni found that the car was tweaked.  Fitted with a new radio tray and shocks for today, the 3-time Electric World Champion said the car was ‘so much better’ now.  In the second of his runs, 15 cars running on the track at one time in each free practice, Rheinard ran wide and made heavy impact with what has been christened the ‘wall of death’ at the end of the straight.  Although he was able to continue he said the car didn’t feel right and they will now have to give it a full looking over.  He currently sits 24th fastest.

Running the 4mm shorter KM Racing H-K1 chassis Balestri was happy with his performance in the first two practice runs today.  Describing it as an electric drivers track, the Italian said his factory Novarossi powered car was at about 80% the set-up he would like for qualifying but he was confident that he could get it near to 100% in the next two outings.  Reminded of the last World Championship where no Italian drivers made the final he said he was determined to make sure that didn’t happen again this year.  KM also have super fast Thai driver Meen V, who has so far set the 5th fastest time just behind 2010 runner-up Takehiro Terauchi, and is one driver Hara said has a strong chance at the title due to the amount of testing he has done prior to the event.

While half of the nitro touring car World Champions are absent, inaugural Champion Adrien Bertin also not making the trip to Thailand, all 5 electric touring car world champions have come to Bangkok with home hero Surikarn C holding the 8th fastest time.  Today’s fourth free practice sessions will be used to reseed the groups for controlled practice which will see just 10 cars running at once on the track.

Top Qualifier at the last World Championship and leading the final until his Mugen went out of control when fuel got into his receiver during one of his pit stops, Robert Pietsch set the 16th fastest time today. The 1:8 World Champion had an interesting start to the event as one of his bags got lost in transit.  At the track last night he got a call from his airline at 19:30 that his bags had arrived but were in customs which closed at 20:00.  Immediately hailing a taxi he said the ride to the airport was like something out of Toyko drift but they made it on time and after paying a custom charge, which his airline will refund to him, his bag with all his spares parts was released.  Having tried a different car and set-up in the first two practice runs today the German said they went the wrong direction with the set-up and he will go back to the car he ran yesterday for the final two free practice runs as it was not as edgy to drive.  A better set-up he said they still needed to find something and even then it was going to be hard to match the pace of the local track heros.

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September 24, 2012

Maifield completes ‘Clash’ title defence hat trick

Ryan Maifield pulled off a hat trick of wins at the 6th Annual JConcepts Clash with the factory Team Associated driver successfully defending all three of his 2011 titles at this year’s event which took place in Mississippi.  Having wrapped up 2WD Buggy & Short Course earlier in the day at the Flowood Indoor R/C Park, Maifield completed the perfect event when he dominated the 30-minute 1:8 Nitro Buggy finals as his main rivals hit problems.  In the end Maifield took the win by four laps from the Losi of Jason Smith with Top Qualifier Dustin Evans recovering from two engine flame-outs to complete the podium.

Pleased with his weekend in Mississippi, from where he will tomorrow travel straight to Argentina for the 1:8 Buggy World Championship warm-up race, Maifield said he had expected a tougher race. Having worked on his RC8.2’s set-up throughout the four days of the event he said it was ‘dialed’ in the final, a fact that was endorsed by his 20.594 fastest lap of the race.

Running one less stop than Maifield, Smith was delighted with second spot as he held off factory TLR driver Evans by 4 seconds.  Competing in his fifth JConcepts Clash, the North Carolina driver benefited from being able to get 10-minutes between stops from the Novarossi engine in the back of his 8ight.  Suffering from brake fade for much of the run he said knowing he had the buffer of one less stop than his rivals he was able to work around the problem.

Running up on a pipe on lap 2 which allowed Maifield to the front, Evans said he had the better car at the start of the race but it counted for little once he had his first flame out 13 laps in.  Cutting twice on the landing after the triple, Evans said increasing the idle cured the problem but having run without problems before the final he had no idea why it suddenly changed.  With his Orion engine running fine following the adjustment he said as the race went on his 8ight got harder to drive as his tyres wore down and developed more and more grip.  TLR/Orion team-mate JR Mitch, who started fourth on the grid, was the first driver to hit trouble in the race when he too suffered a flame out at the triple just 3 laps into the race.  Suffering two further flame outs he called it a day just half way through the race.

Starting from 6th on the 12 car grid, Tanner Denney looked like he might take a podium. Running the 3rd fastest lap of the race, joining Maifield and Evans as the only drivers to run under 21 seconds, the 17-year-old was battling with Smith over second spot when his Reedy engine stopped on lap 41.  Losing a lap as his RC8.2 was brought back to the pitlane and fired back up he rejoined in 7th from where he recovered to finish fifth behind Tim Smith.

With the 1:8 Nitro Buggy final out of the way the schedule moved on to the 3rd round of mains for the electric classes.  With Maifield having wrapped up the two higher profile classes of the event, 2WD Buggy and 2WD Short Course, A3 was all about deciding who was going to be runner-up.  First up was 2WD Buggy which with Maifield sitting the race out had Evans at the front of the grid but the race was to produce no less than four different leaders with Evans, Ruona, Denney and Flurer all getting to run out front it was the former who took it to secure second overall ahead of Flurer.  Evans also went on to win A3 of 2WD Short Course with his 22SCT but despite retiring his example it was Mitch who finished overall runner-up on a tie break.

Elsewhere in 1:8 Electric Buggy Max Flurer won the third A-Main to take the overall win from Jake Dellinger. Top Qualifier and AE team boss Brent Thielke had to settle for third overall on a tie break with A1 winner Dellinger.  In 4WD Buggy event creator and JConcepts founder Jason Ruona took the spoils ahead of A2 winner Denney as he repeated his A1 win in A3 while Max Flurer completed the overall Top 3.

So another JConcepts Clash is in the bag. Having had to contend with rain for the past number of years the 6th running of the event ran swiftly and without interruption. The first time to hold the race indoors the Flowood Indoor R/C Park proved very popular with racers.  JConcepts, who supported RedRC’s coverage of the event, would like to thank everyone who made the trip to Flowood possible, track owner Bubba Barham for the use of the great facility along with Reedy, LRP, Associated, A-Main Hobbies, P1 Brand, Airtronics, Durango, O’Donnell and Futaba for supporting the event.

1:8 Nitro Buggy
Overall Result
1.(2) Ryan Maifield – Associated – 83/30:00.688
2.(5) Jason Smith – Team Losi Racing – 79/30:12.782
3.(1) Dustin Evans – Team Losi Racing – 79/30:16.705
4.(9) Tim Smith – Associated – 77/30:15.811
5.(6) Tanner Denney – Associated – 76/30:04.935
6.(8) Jake Dellinger – Assocaited – 75/30:03.691
7.(10)Kevin Hawkinson – Team Losi Racing – 73/30:13.783
8.(12)Shane Ogden – Team Losi Racing – 73/30:21.118
9.(11)Blake Boggs – Associated – 73/30:22.291
10.(3)Cole Odgen – Team Losi Racing – 68/30:06.761
11.(7)William McIver – Team C – 60/24:47.393
12.(4)JR Mitch – Team Losi Racing – 29/14:30.954

2WD Buggy
A3-Main Result
1.(2) Dustin Evans – Team Losi Racing – 16/6:16.401
2.(7) Max Flurer – Associated – 16/6:16.569
3.(6) Jason Ruona – Associated – 16/6:18.556
4.(3) JR Mitch – Team Losi Racing – 16/6:22.730
5.(8) Tanner Denney – Associated – 16/6:23.296
6.(5) Zack Genova – Kyosho – 15/6:00.012
7.(9) Daimon Borkowicz – Associated – 15/6:02.253
8.(10)Steve Bortolotti – Tamiya – 15/6:04.811
9.(4) Brent Thielke – Associated – 15/6:07.975
10.(11)Paul Wynn – Associated – 15/6:12.646
11.(12)Jeffery Fleckenstein – Associated – 14/6:11.172
12.(1) Ryan Maifield – Associated – DNS

Overall Result
1. Ryan Maifield – 200 pts
2. Dustin Evans – 199
3. Max Flurer – 197
4. JR Mitch – 196
5. Jason Ruona – 195
6. Tanner Denney – 192
7. Brent Thielke – 191
8. Zack Genova – 190
9. Daimon Borkowicz – 187
10.Steve Bortolotti – 185
11.Paul Wynn – 181
12.Jeffery Fleckenstein – 181

2WD Short Course
A3-Main Result
1.(2) Dustin Evans – Team Losi Racing – 15/6:00.484
2.(4) Daimon Borkowicz – Associated – 15/608.614
3.(5) Max Flurer – Associated – 15/6:14.648
4.(6) Paul Wynn – Associated – 15/6:22.534
5.(7) Justin Cranford – Associated – 14/6:01.718
6.(8) Chris Viesins – Team Losi Racing – 14/6:15.220
7.(10)Brian Abbott – Associated – 14/6:17.305
8.(3) JR Mitch – Team Losi Racing – 14/6:23.239
9.(12)Brent Lebo – Associated – 13/6:11.780
10.(11)Jerold Brock III – Associated – 12/6:04.218
11.(9)Tylor Weaver – Team Losi Racing – 12/6:07.363
12.(1)Ryan Maifield – Associated – DNS

Overall Result
1. Ryan Maifield – 200 pts
2. JR Mitch – 198
3. Dustin Evans – 198
4. Max Flurer – 196
5. Daimon Borkowicz – 196
6. Paul Wynn – 194
7. Justin Cranford – 190
8. Chris Viesins – 189
9. Brian Abbott – 187
10.Brent Lebo – 183
11.Jerold Brock III – 181
12.Tylor Weaver – 180

View the complete results here.

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September 23, 2012

Maifield retains 2WD titles at ‘Clash’

Ryan Maifield has retained both his 2WD titles at the JConcepts Clash, the Associated driver backing up his A1 wins with victory in the second of the Buggy and Short Course Truck Mains.  While Short Course was another easy encounter for the classes’ Top Qualifier, in buggy the Arizona driver looked like he was going to have to settle for second behind TLR’s Dustin Evans until the 2011 US Champion clipped the piping just as he came around to complete lap 11 of 16.  Losing almost 4-seconds as he got beached on the pipe this allowed Maifield back to the front where he would stay to take the win by 2 seconds to wrap up the title early.

With two 30-minute nitro races having run on the track since the first 2WD Buggy Main, Maifield said track conditions for the second of the 6-minute races were totally different to the morning and running the same set-up as A1 on his B4.1 it was a handful to drive.  Getting chased down by Evans the end of lap three saw a mistake from Maifield allowing Evans to the front. However 7 laps later while looking to have the race under control Evans hit trouble at the very same spot handing the race back to his rival.

Having struggled with his set-up in A1, Evans changed his front shock set-up for A2 which he said due to the track conditions didn’t make it any easier but it did give him a slightly better buggy than Maifield. Commenting on his costly mistake on lap 10 he said off power his steering was ultra sensitive as he had so much front end grip but summed it up as a ‘silly driver error’.

While Maifield checked out in 2WD Short Course the big battle of the race was between Evans and his team-mate JR Mitch.  With Evans having the quicker of the two factory TLR trucks in A1 before retiring, it was Mitch who was running sway bars who had the better handling truck this time round.  Mistakes by Evans in the closing laps handed the advantage to Mitch who again took second behind Maifield. The third and final leg is now a battle for the runners-up spot between the TLR pairing for which Evans is going to copy Mitch’s set-up and fit sway bars.

The second round of Mains at Flowood Indoor R/C Park also saw the 2WD Mod Truck title decided after Brent Thielke pulled of the pass of the event on Tanner Denney. Having taken the lead from Top Qualifier and A1 winner Thielke on lap 11, 17-year-old Denney looked like he was going to force the title to go to the third main but his team boss pulled a spectacular surprise pass at the last corner denying last year’s runner-up the A2 win by 43/100th of a second.  Once again Kyosho’s Zack Genova completed the Top 3 for the leg.

Also wrapping up a title early at the 6th Annual JConcepts Clash, which is being held outside Florida for the first time, was Matthew Olson. The MIP driver backed up his 4WD Short Course A1 win with another victory over Max Flurer the second time of asking.

One class that will go the distance in terms of determining who takes home the overall winners trophy is 4WD Buggy. Having got beaten by Jason Ruona in A1, Top Qualifier Tanner Denney got the job done second time of asking while Ruona broke and retired 2 laps from home.

2WD Buggy
A2-Main Result
1.(1) Ryan Maifield – Associated – 16/6:04.328
2.(2) Dustin Evans – Team Losi Racing – 16/6:06.667
3.(7) Max Flurer – Associated – 16/6:12.435
4.(4) Brent Thielke – Associated – 16/6:13.384
5.(3) JR Mitch – Team Losi Racing – 16/6:20.264
6.(6) Jason Ruona – Associated – 16/6:20.423
7.(5) Zack Genova – Kyosho – 15/6:00.727
8.(9) Daimon Borkowicz – Associated – 15/6:03.184
9.(10) Steve Bortolotti – Tamiya – 15/6:07.874
10.(12)Jeffery Fleckenstein – Associated – 14/6:21.911
11.(8) Tanner Denney – Associated – 3/1:15.979
12.(11)Paul Wynn – Associated – DNS

2WD Short Course
A2-Main Result
1.(1) Ryan Maifield – Associated – 16/6:16.157
2.(3) JR Mitch – Team Losi Racing – 16/6:23.800
3.(2) Dustin Evans – Team Losi Racing – 15/6:02.151
4.(6) Paul Wynn – Associated – 15/6:12.373
5.(4) Daimon Borkowicz – Associated – 15/6:12.868
6.(5) Max Flurer – Associated – 15/6:22.590
7.(7) Justin Cranford – Associated – 14/6:03.521
8.(10)Brian Abbott – Associated – 14/6:10.745
9.(8) Chris Viesins – Team Losi Racing – 14/6:13.108
10.(12)Brent Lebo – Associated – 13/6:20.830
11.(11)Jerold Brock III – Associated – 12/6:05.200
12.(9)Tylor Weaver – Team Losi Racing – 7/3:22.668

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