Rheinard & Wilck put wins on the board at RROC

Defending Champion Marc Rheinard and his Infinity team-mate Viktor Wilck put wins on the board at the Reedy Race of Champions with Rheinard winning the more interesting of the Round 2 encounters at Steel City RC Speedway.  Starting third on the grid, Rheinard took almost the entire race to get by pole man Jan Ratheisky, the pass coming with two laps to go.  With contact during the pass hampering Round 1 winner Ronald Volker who was running third, it would be the the other of the Round 1 winners Meen Vejrak who would finish second with Ratheisky third and Volker 4th.  Wilck would take his win from fifth on the grid ahead of Akio Sobue and Ryan Cavalieri.  Starting on pole, Cavalieri built up an early gap helped by Wilck making contact with team-mate Sobue and having to wait while the battled over second.  The offroad star soon had the touring car Pros back on his case with them each going through on separate occasions when the Yokomo driver ran wide.

Summing up his comfortable win over Sobue, 2012 Champion Wilck said, ‘It was an easy heat this time.  I got together a little with Akio and had to wait for him but I could then make a clean pass and and when Cav had a slide I could pass him.’  Second in the opening round behind Vejrak, Wilck now shares the early points leads.  Asked about the traction, the Swede replied, ‘It was a lot better this time but I think the second heat is helped by heat 1 because they cleaned the track for us after the wait before invite (class) starts’.

‘It’s a win’, was Rheinard’s reaction after his second round encounter, the 7 time winner still unhappy with the feeling of his car. He continued, ‘Jan did a good job. He is a hard fighter.  The whole field was closing so I couldn’t do anything stupid to pass him. Finally I could make a pass down his inside’.  Having changed his set-up between rounds, the German said, ‘It still feels like driving on ice’, adding it was ‘hard to say if car was any better or it the traction that is strange’.

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Volker & Vejrak open Reedy Race with wins

The 22nd running of the Reedy Race of Champions is underway, with the sun finally turning up after rain washed out yesterday’s practice day.  With just two heats of racing per round for the 22 car field, it was Meen Vejrak who registered the first win on the events debut at the Steel City RC Speedway.  Starting from pole, the Yokomo driver managed to stay out front throughout the more stacked of the two races despite pressure from Viktor Wilck who made contact with the Thai driver on more than one occasion.  Behind them defending champion Marc Rheinard would open his campaign with a P3 after Jan Ratheisky got the jump on him at the start that saw a good battle between the two Germans.  In the other encounter, which featured no less than 8 US drivers, it was the visitors that came through to complete the Top 3.  Starting 10th on the grid Ronald Volker was up to third by the hairpin on the opening lap and soon after was out front for a dominant win.  Lining up 11th for the start, RROC debutant Lucas Urbain would take his Awesomatix through to second with young up & coming Japanese star Takuma Sasaki third.

Commenting on his win, former podium finisher Vejrak said, ‘it is great to start the Reedy Race with a win but I had a lucky draw’.  He continued, ‘starting from pole was super risky because its our first time here and we have very little running so the track is different every time’.  On his battle with Wilck, he said, ‘me and Viktor were super close but I was able to control the race until 3-minutes. Then my car slowed down and I had to block him’.  With a new format putting the race winner of the previous round in the same race for the following round, Vejrak will line-up alongside team-mate Volker for Round 2 saying, ‘I hope we can both get a good result’.

On his race Volker said, ‘I was drawn to start 10th on the grid but at the first corner I was able to gain 7 spots around the outside line and I was up to 3rd by the hairpin.’  He continued, ‘It was great team start with Meen winning his heat which had the stronger line-up.  On his car, the former champion said, ‘it was good but the grip was a little down again because of the gap between the last race and the wind.  We will make a small adjustment now to get more stability in the rear’.

Chasing his 8th Reedy Race title this weekend, Rheinard summed up his 3rd place by saying, ‘I lost the start to Jan (Ratheisky) and then got stuck behind him.  We had a good battle but by the time I got passed the others were gone’.  A huge fan of the Tamiya track, the Infinity driver said he didn’t get the Reedy Race feeling from the opening race but is hoping for a better second run.  He said, ‘I am still struggling with the car. It doesn’t feel right.  The grip is strange but I have a big change I will try for the next one’.

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Track Focus – Steel City RC Speedway

Track Name – Steel City RC Speedway
Owners – Phil & Kyle Goodwine
Country – USA
Location – Auto Club Speedway, Fontana, California
Direction – Clockwise
Surface – Asphalt

Opened just a little over a year ago, the brand new Steel City RC Speedway located at the full size Auto Club Speedway has quickly risen to prominence after being chosen as the replacement home of the legendary Touring Car Reedy Race of Champions and also securing the 2019 1:8 Onroad World Championships.  Following the announcement that the 21st running of the Reedy Race would be the last at one of the sport’s most iconic tracks, Tamiya Raceway, the search was on to find a suitable new home for the most prestigious touring car race to be held on American soil.  Step in Phil & Kyle Goodwine, the father and son creators of Steel City RC Speedway, a track that is very distinctive in its red coloured infield.  With the small Tamiya track’s super popular layout and infamous kink always going to be a benchmark that would be hard to replace, the nitro oriented Steel City track would not seem the most logical choice.

Build on an area 250ft wide by 150ft deep for a track length of 1000ft, the track has been reduced by about 25%.  To put the scale of that in to prospective, the piece they have cut out of the track layout is the size of the entire Tamiya track.   The story behind the track name and its coming to be is an interesting one.  Originally the land on which the track is build was part of the Kaiser Steel, the 2nd largest steel producer in the world during World War 2.  The company eventually went bankrupt and was bought by Penske who built the full size motor speedway.  Running an electric touring car race in one of the parking lots during the Indycar weekend at the track, that was the start of the relationship between the real track and  Goodwines who then negotiated a lease to build the impressive looking track that is now Steel City RC Speedway.

With rain on Thursday limiting drivers to just one damp practice, and just two dry 4-minute practices this morning (Friday) before the first of the heads up races, defending champion Marc Rheinard’s first impressions of the track layout was, ‘its ok, but for Reedy Race I thinks it is too open and too fast’.  Former multiple Champion Ronald Volker echoed those thoughts saying, ‘it’s not a difficult layout however it is high speed, so for heads up racing it’s going to be tricky. I’m not sure what to expect for racing’.

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Reedy Race practice rained off in not so sunny California

Sunny California didn’t live up to its billing today with practice for the 22nd running of the Touring Car Reedy Race of Champions being rained off.  With this year’s event the beginning of a new era for the legendary race as it moves from the famous Tamiya RC Raceway, which is no more, to Steel City RC Speedway, invite drivers got just one run in less than ideal conditions, before shortly after lunch the rains returned and the decision was made to call an end to official proceedings.  With cars struggling for traction, reigning 7-time RROC Champion Marc Rheinard joked from the drivers stand it felt like playing Super Mario and running over banana skins. With weather for both Friday and Saturday set to deliver the shorts & t-shirts weather associated with California, Race Director Scotty Ernst issued a new schedule which will see the invitational drivers get two practice runs in the morning before getting down to the real business of 5 rounds of the events unique heads up racing.  A further 5 rounds are planning for Saturday but with rain forecast to arrive again on Sunday afternoon, a call to run the final two rounds of racing on Sunday morning will be made based on the the latest forecast given on Saturday.