January 6, 2017

Orlowski tops 2WD seeding at DHI Cup

Defending champion Michal Orlowski has topped 2WD Buggy seeding at the DHI Cup presented by LRP. The Schumacher driver posted the fastest 3-consecutive laps in the first of the two rounds of control practice at the Danish event with Marc Rheinard his closest challenger. Little under a tenth of a second off Orlowski’s 55.401 pace, Rheinard would also post his best time in the first round, all drivers reporting high tyre wear due to the tracks low grip. Completing the Top 3 would be Rheinard’s Yokomo team-mate Frederik Hovgaard who was the only driver in the Top 5 to better his opening time in the final practice.

Starting out practice with his ‘basic carpet set-up’, EOS Poland double winner Orlowski said with the ‘lower traction than (he is) used too’ they had to make some small changes to the car to find more speed and given the grip levels they have managed to get the car working well for the conditions. Running a KF2 fitted with a number of prototype parts, the Polish driver said the low traction is causing issues with tyre wear with the wheel spin leading to high wear of the Schumacher handout tyre. In terms of the track layout, the 15-year-old said it has a good rhythm and once you find that it is really enjoyable to drive. With ‘a few places’ you can make time he said getting the landing right at the jump under the driver stand is key to a good lap.

While a multiple winner of the DHI Cup in Touring Cars, this is Rheinard’s first attempt at offroad. Sent by his Offroad sponsors Yokomo, the former TRF driver still to announce his new touring car future, the German summed up his 2WD practice as ‘actually not too bad’. Winner of the current Euro Offroad Series season opener in 2WD, he said the biggest issue for him so far has been the lack of traction compared to the EOS adding ‘the tyre wear is really high’. Improving the car with a shock position change, he was content that the ‘lap times are fine’ and while ‘on full power the car slides’ it was the same issue for everyone. In terms of the track layout, he said, ‘its ok, its not too difficult’. 17-year-old team-mate Hovgaard was happy with his YZ-2 after a swaybar adjustment which the Dane said improved the car under acceleration. For qualifying he plans to just refresh the diff oil.

‘My car is pretty good’ was how Joern Neumann summed setting the fourth fastest time. The Serpent driver, who has won the 4WD Buggy title every year since the DHI Cup introduced offroad in 2012, was another to start with his regular EOS set-up on his SDX2. Having to make small changes for the grip levels which he described as ‘a lot lower’, the two time 2WD Champion described the resulting tyre wear as ‘crazy’ saying he doubted if two runs would be possible on a set of the Version 1 Mini Pin tyres feeling the risk was the tyres would go off too much at the end of the second run. For Q1 he will leave his car unchanged other than start out with a new set of tyres and gauge the track after 4WD had run its practice on it.

2WD Champion in 2015, then driving a Team C as HB didn’t have a car at the time of him joining the team, David Ronnefalk would post the 5th fastest time ahead of fellow Swede Christoffer Svensson. With HB Racing designer Torrance Deguzman making the trip over from the US to Denmark to help develop HB’s 1:10 offering for Europe’s popular offroad carpet tracks, Ronnefalk said of his practice time, ‘I’m happy. We are coming a lot closer to the other brands’. Running a D216 fitted with a different chassis and 3D printed laydown gearbox he said the changes ‘are really good and have helped (them) come a long way’. Admitting the event is more of a test session than a attempt to challenge for a second DHI Cup title, he said one area they need to improve is how the car accelerates saying ‘Orlowski and Marc’s cars have more acceleration’. One area he will work on for qualifying is his shock package but overall he concluded he was ‘pretty happy’.

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January 6, 2017

Track Focus – DHI Cup Odense

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 – 16 (Onroad), 5 (Offroad)

After recharging their own batteries and looking to get out of the food coma that resulted from the Christmas over indulgence, for drivers the DHI Cup in Denmark marks the dawn of the new season and for the last 17 years has been the traditional opening event of the international touring car race calendar. While the event may not have its once blue ribboned international driver line up, it still packs a punch in terms of the quality of its driver line-up and it quickly books out proving that it is still a favourite among racers. Based in Denmark’s third largest city of Odense, the famed international Touring Car event has also become an important European offroad event with both the offroad and onroad classes racing simultaneously on two back to back tracks that are separated by a huge drivers stand.

On the onroad track, the entry split into 90 Super Stock and 70 Modified entries, the first thing noticeable about the carpet is that it’s grey, the DHI Cup organisers not following the trend of running the now almost standard issue Black ETS carpet. Heading the large organisation team that put on the event and impressively deconstruct the entire set-up with military precision on Sunday night, Ulrich Rassmussen said the reason for continuing to run grey carpet is that they like that after some running on the brand new carpet a visual race line develops. As for the 2017 layout, defending Champion Ronald Volker was again tasked with coming up with the plans for the track design. While his 2016 design didn’t translate to how he had envisaged it, the Yokomo driver who is chasing his 8th DHI Cup win, said ‘they did a very good job’ with building the track this year. Describing his layout as ‘not too difficult or not too easy’, he added, ‘while it has a couple of hairpins it is quite flowing’. Pointing out the short angled wooden sections that are used to layout the curved sections of the track, Volker said they are a very good system as you can run up on them without flipping the car making them a much better option than the standard corner dots.

The Offroad track, the 160 entries split evenly between 2WD and 4WD Buggy, is made up using last year’s touring car track carpet. A total of 10 wooden jumps, mostly carpet covered, making up a lap of the track, the main feature is the wall section which having been in front of the drivers has now been moved to the front right side of the track. Defending 2WD champion Michal Orlowski said while the layout is fine, the grip is low adding ‘you can hear the wheels spinning as you drive around’.

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October 9, 2016

Ronnefalk hits jackpot to become World Champion in Vegas

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David Ronnefalk is the new 1:8 Offroad World Champion, the Swede finally delivering on the promise he has shown ever since being crowned European B Champion in 2009.  Starting from 3rd on the grid, the HB Racing driver would win the 1-hour encounter in convincing style once he got passed pole sitter & defending champion Ty Tessmann, his HB Racing team-mate eventually finishing up third.  Making it a European 1-2 in the American’s own backyard, 2012 World champion Robert Batlle would take the runner-up spot recovering from some big early mistakes.  With Ronnefalk claiming the sport’s greatest prize, RC Tracks of Las Vegas would put the spotlight on his replacement as nitro offroad’s next star of the future as David Ongaro, despite his age, mixed it with the biggest names in RC with ease and confidence.  A back pressure pipe would deny him from finishing his first Worlds final as Vice Champion leaving the Italian 6th behind Ryan Cavalieri.  With many feeling the first running of a Worlds final under floodlights would favour the American drivers, it would be Top Qualifier Jared Tebo who would be the best US finisher taking fourth 2.2-seconds up on Cavalieri.

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A driver who has never lacked the belief that he would one day be World Champion, his preparations for the 16th running of the Worlds well highlighted on his Facebook page, Ronnefalk said, ‘This has been my goal since starting racing’.  He continued, ‘ever since I teamed up with Adrien (Bertin) I have had a super good relationship and we won this together.  I want to thank my family, my girlfriend and all the racers back in Sweden for being super supportive and letting me do what I love’.  On the race he said, ‘From the start I had a good race.  When Cavalieri flamed out I had a big enough gap to Ty which meant I had less pressure on how I could take the first few jumps. Ongaro also showed good patience behind me’.   He continued, ‘I have no idea how long I was behind Ty but my goal for the race was to makes as few mistakes as possible.  In the Semi I was just trying to survive out there so I knew I had more speed but after I got the lead others started making mistakes behind me and I pulled away slightly every lap. I think my biggest gap was 28-seconds.  With 2 stops left I knew everyone’s tyres would go off so I could control the race although I had a couple of mistake coming home’.  One of those mistakes was at the end of the last lap, it stopping Bertin in his tracks as he prepared to celebrate his protege’s win, with the 20-year-old saying ‘on the last lap my mind was somewhere else’.  With his goal reached Ronnefalk said his new goal is the electric offroad Worlds which run next year.  A podium finisher at the last 1:10 Worlds in Japan, he said, ‘now our attention will be on developing two cars for the Worlds next year in China and I will do a lot of practice at my own track where he will host a race in 2-weeks time.

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‘From hospital to 2nd, I’m super happy’, was Batlle’s reaction to coming from 8th on the grid to finish runner-up after a late battle with Tessmann.  The Spaniard, who on arriving in the US for the event ended up in hospital with painful kidney stones, added, ‘Given how the week started if you had told me on Tuesday I could have second I would have said OK’.  On his race the Mugen driver said, ‘my car was loose at the beginning and I had 2 or 3 big mistakes that lost me a lot of time, but the car improved and was then very good letting me get into some huge battles.  I’m super happy with how the race turned out but David deserved the win for sure.  I’m I happy to have a World and now a Vice World Champion trophy.’

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Summing up his race Tessmann said, ‘It started good and the tyres were really good at the start but the last 3/4 of the race they got worse & worse’.  Running Pro-Line Fugitive Lights on his OS powered D815V2, the Canadian continued, ‘In the Semi practice I ran them and they faded but that was in the day and I thought at night they wouldn’t’.   Losing out on making it a HB Racing 1-2 by just 2.2-seconds, he said, ‘David drove great and everything worked good for him. Well done to him on the win.  We’ll try again in 2018’.

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‘I go screwed from start’ was how a less than happy Cavalieri summed up his race after finishing 5th.  Having for a few moments held pole for the final but then lost his win for contact with Tessmann on the final corner of that 30-minute encounter as the battled for the win, he continued, ‘starting from pit lane irritated me and I drove bad’.  With his RC8 flaming out as the cars waited to be placed down causing the start to be aborted some confusion followed over him retaking his P2 starting position with it soon clarified he must start from pitlane. Having been on the podium at the previous Worlds, he said, ‘I tried to recover but couldn’t put it together.  It wasn’t my day which sucks’.

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‘Happy’ with his sixth but adding ‘second would have been better’, Ongaro said nerves led to a couple of early mistakes.  With his MBX7R getting better as the race progressed he was able to recover the lost time and get up to second.  With the race producing a number of intense battles for the podium places at various stages over the 60-minutes, the fuel pressure pipe coming off would ruin his spectacular showing.  Having to nurse the engine for a lap & a half to get to his next scheduled stop, that stop would be lengthy as they refitted the tubing, with a crash on the entry to the pits compounding the lost time’.  Behind Ongaro, Renaud Savoya would be the best of the TLR drivers finishing ahead of team-mate Ryan Maifield, who for a time looked on target for at least a podium. Despite how rough the track was to become for the finals, all 12 cars would go the full distance with the order completed by ninth place Ryan Lutz, Elliott Boots, Dakotah Phend and Kyle McBride.

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