January 11, 2014

‘From Race Control’ – Day 2 at DHI Cup

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Today’s action at the DHI Cup is all about qualifying.  On the Onroad track drivers will complete three rounds of qualifying having run their opening qualifier last night at the Stadium Arena Fyn.  On the Offroad track, first up for the day is the remaining 2 rounds of 2WD Buggy qualifying before the drivers switch over to 4WD Qualifying which runs all four qualifiers today.  The line-up for tomorrow’s final will be determined by each drivers best 2 from 4 rounds of qualifying.

January 10, 2014

Back to back TQ runs for Levin at DHI Cup

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New Team C signing Oskar Levin got his debut for his new sponsor off to the perfect start at the DHI Cup after the Swede claimed the opening two rounds of qualifying at the Danish event.  The result leaves the 19-year-old holding the provisional overall TQ overnight in Odense while some of his key rivals are under pressure to make the most of tomorrow’s remaining two qualifiers.  Defending Champion Joern Neumann finds himself only 4th overall, while Xray’s Martin Bayer is 10th and Schumacher’s Tom Cockerill is way down in 32nd after a DNF in Q1.

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Very pleased, Levin described his opening TQ run as a ‘good clean run’ but said a fresh set of tyres caught him out in Q2 and he had to work a lot harder to take that one. With his TM2 V2 a little edgy on the fresh set of handout Schumacher tyres he made an early mistake and the buggy got caught up on the piping.  Dropping him down the order he said after 2-minutes the tyres came in and the buggy was ‘really good like in Q1’ and getting his confidence back he was able to push really hard with no problems allowing him to work his way back to the front to take the round from Cockerill.

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Its a Team C 1-2 overnight at the DHI with Danish driver Kim Nielsen sitting second with his borrowed buggy.  Having only got the car this morning, driving it for the very first time in the opening practice, he straight away was very comfortable with the car which he described as being ‘easy to drive’.  Finishing second to Levin in Q1, in Q2 he took up the lead of the 5-minute run when the Swede had his early mistake but lost it again with a mistake of his own which saw the TM2 ending up on its roof and needing to be marshaled.  Despite this and a second mistake Nielsen still managed to post the third fastest time.

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Neumann, who is looking to make it three DHI wins from the 3-years Offroad has been part of the event, said his opening run to the third fastest time was ‘OK’ but ‘a little slow’.  Changing from a Cut Stagger front tyre to Mini Pins as he looked for more steering he said it was a bad call and resulted in a run with ‘too many mistakes’.  Sporting a bodyshell design this weekend that is less than pleasing on the eye, the EOS champion plans to revert to his previous tyre choice for Q3.

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Ahead & behind Neumann in the qualification ranking are the Associated’s of Swede Niclas Mansson and young Dane Jesper Rasmussen. Mansson sits 3rd overall but the 24-year-old felt while his first run to fifth was good his second run could have been better if he had not had problems with traffic.

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Rasmussen had a very strong & clean opening qualifier taking his C4.2 to the fourth fastest time.  On target for another strong run in Q2, the 15-year-old got hit by Neumann, the incident leaving him to finish up 9th quickest. Happy with the performance of his C4.2 he will leave his set-up as is as for Q3 and just focus on getting in an incident free 5-minute run.

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After his ‘car fell apart in Q1’ following some ‘bad mechanic work’ resulted in a hinge pin falling out, Cockerill said his Cougar KF was really good in the second one although the driver this time had some problems.  Having cleared it no problem throughout practice the British driver ‘crashed 3 to 4 times’ on the centre table top.  Confident that the ‘car is there’ in terms of pace, he said with a clean run it will be very tight among the top drivers and he is looking forward to tomorrow remaining two qualifiers.

View the complete Offroad event results here.

View our event image gallery here.

January 10, 2014

Neumann & Bayer top Offroad practice at DHI

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European Champions Joern Neumann and Martin Bayer have topped their respective title classes in practice at the DHI Cup in Denmark.  The third year the event has featured offroad competition, Neumann took his Durango to the fastest three consecutive laps in 2WD Buggy ahead of Schumacher’s Tom Cockerill and new Team C signing Oskar Levin.  In 4WD it was Xray’s Bayer who set the pace from Neumann who comes into the event looking to complete a DHI hat trick of wins in both classes.

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The master of indoor offroad racing on carpet, the reigning Euro Offroad Series Champion was pleased with his 4WD despite being only second fastest and not so happy with his 2WD despite topping the reseeding for the qualifiers.  Describing the 4WD times between him and Bayer as super close, he said his focus now is his 2WD Buggy which was only ‘OK’ suffering from an overall lack of traction.  Having run all four off his practice runs on the same set of handout Schumacher tyres the German ace said he hopes a fresh set of rubber for Q1 will bring some improvements.  With practice for both classes complete the remainder of today’s action will now switch to two rounds of 2WD qualifying.

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Bayer described his 4WD as ‘amazing’ adding the LRP powered XB4 was ‘super easy to drive’.  Having made no changes to the set-up since arriving in Odense, he said he couldn’t be happier with how the car is running.  Only 5th fastest in 2WD, he said without mistakes his XB4 2wd would be a lot faster and for qualifying he said all should be ok over 5-minutes once he cleans up his driving.

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Cockerill described his 2WD buggy as ‘really good’ despite traction being a lot lower than expected. Preparing his Cougar KF for high traction ahead of the event he said he had to do quite a bit of work to the car in the opening practices but he is now very happy with how it is working. Admitting to focusing on his 2WD when he should be working on his 4WD he said he feels he has a really good chance in 2WD where as in 4WD Neumann & Bayer are ‘untouchable’.  The Schumacher designer took his K1 Aero to the fourth fastest 4WD time.

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Third fastest in 2WD, Levin was delighted with the performance of his new Team C TM2 V2 which he said is ‘really stable but still fast’.  His first international race with Team C, the 19-year-old Swede said he is really confident with the new car.  Having only received his 4WD Buggy yesterday after it was shipped directly from his sponsor to the hotel here at the track Levin set the 6th fastest time.  He said unlike his 2WD it needs some work in terms of fine tuning the set-up.

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Heading the home Danish challenge in practice were Kim Nielsen who set the 3rd fastest time in 4WD and Torben Højfeldt who was 4th fastest in 2WD.  Making his race debut since signing for Team Associated, up & coming 15-year-old Danish driver Jesper Rasmussen set the 5th fastest time in 4WD.

View our event image gallery here.

January 10, 2014

Track Focus – DHI Stadium Arena Fyn

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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 – 14

An event that has become the traditional international season opener for electric touring car, this year is the 14th running of the famous Danish event.  Created by Kim Moldt Bendiksen who named the event after his r/c business Dansk Hobby Import (DHI), the first event took place in 2001 when it was won by now AME/ORCA frontman Andreas Myrberg.  Starting out more as a club race in a small hall, the event quickly established itself with international teams and drivers with an impressive list of past winners that includes three World Champions – Atsushi Hara, Jilles Groskamp and Marc Rheinard.  Moving to its current location in 2008, the impressive Stadium Arena Fyn, the event has since doubled up with 1:10 Electric Offroad being added in 2012.  The running of the two different categories has resulted in the creation of a rather unique temporary track by the Odense R/C Minicar Club, drivers sharing the driver’s stand standing back to back as they run on their respective onroad or offroad tracks.

A club of around 55 members, they are normally found racing outdoors in the Summer just 5-minutes from the Arena while for their Winter club racing the have a hall they use for both onroad and offroad 20-minutes away.  Acquiring such an impressive and large venue, that would under normal circumstances be prohibitively costly to rent for an r/c event the club in fact gets free use of the venue.  With the city of Odense, the third largest in Denmark, providing funding for the building of the Arena part of the deal is that a select number of days are made available for local organisations such as the r/c club to hold events.

While initially the event was run by Kim, as the event grew each year so did the input of the Odense club who would eventually take over the full organisation of the event.  With the DHI title having become so established with drivers & teams the club have maintained the name. Headed by Ulrich Rasmussen, it takes a crew of around 25 volunteers to build the double track set-up.  The addition of offroad to the event came about after a slow down in touring car entries and 2014 is looking like a come back event with both events attracting a good international entry.

In terms of the track layouts defending offroad champion Joern Neumann described the layout of the medium sized track as nice but after early practice the Durango driver said the traction is loose particularly on the black coloured carpet sections compared with the traditional grey indoor racing carpet jumps.  The driver with the most DHI wins in Touring Car, having won the title first in 2007 and then three years in a row from 2010, Ronald Volker described the track as ‘fast and flowing’.  The Yokomo ace said the layout is ‘maybe a little too wide open’ but that should make for close racing.  In terms of traction he said based on previous experience of the event he expects it to be ‘high’.

A DHI Cup fact – 5 drivers have contested all 14 DHI Cups.  Two of those are two of Denmarks top former international drivers Steen Graversenn and former European Touring Car Champion Jonas Kaerup.  The other three drivers never to have missed a year of racing are Soren Jeppesen, Soren Boy Holst and Jens Otte Frederiksen.

Image Gallery

View our event image gallery here.

January 10, 2014

‘From Race Control’ – Day 1 at DHI Cup

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Red RC kicks off its 2014 event coverage this weekend at the DHI Cup in Odense, Denmark.  Now in its 14th year, today’s opening day of action will see two rounds of free practice, followed by two timed practices which will determine the seeding of the heats for the qualifying.  A dual discipline event with offroad having been added to the long running international touring car event in recent years, Day 1 of the event will end with a single round of qualifying for the touring car drivers and two round of qualifying for the 2WD offroad competitors.