January 8, 2016

New season but no change as Volker tops DHI practice

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It is the long established opening international race of the new season, but the early signs from the DHI Cup is that little has changed for 2016 with Ronald Volker topping the practice times in Odense.  Closest to the 6-time winner of the Danish classic would be Alexander Hagberg, the gap over 3-consecutive laps being 1/10th of a second.  Winner of the event in 2013, then driving for Xray, Adrien Berntsen would complete the Top 3 for new Danish manufacturer Gizmo with Viljami Kutvonen making it four different manufacturers at the top of the time sheets with his Awesomatix.

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Winner of the event for the last two years, Volker said ‘practice went well’.  Starting out running two cars each practice, one a carbon chassis and the other aluminium,  he said while both cars ran the same lap time he preferred the feeling of the alu chassis choosing it for the timed practice. Having a distinct advantage of over 4/10ths after the first timed practice, Volker said his rivals closed right up in the final practice.  Having struggled with his BD7’s consistency over 5-minutes at the opening round of the ETS in December, he said here the car is very good over 5-minutes.  While lap times are close with his rivals he is confident he will benefit from that consistency at the end of the qualifiers.

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A touring car driver with one of the busiest race schedules, Hagberg was clearly looking refreshed after his ‘no racing’ break over the Christmas.  The Swede summed up practice by saying, ‘as always things are the same at the DHI. It starts off with low grip but as the traction comes up it starts to suit the Xray car better’.  Runner up at last year’s DHI Cup, the European Champion said his T4 2016 ‘feels good but just needs slightly more pace’ continuing ‘we can still improve it with more set-up changes’.  Team-mate Bruno Coelho would take his example to the 6th fastest time.  His first DHI Cup outing, he said the biggest thing for him are that the handout LRP tyres are ‘completely different’ to what he is used to racing on.  Feeling he is ‘missing a little steering’ he said it’s proving difficult to find but added ‘we are still working on it’.

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Having impressed on his Gizmo debut at the opening round of the ETS where he was seeded in the top heat, Berntsen said his GZ1 is working really good joking that the driver was also ‘pretty decent’ today.  Describing the Top 3 pace as ‘super tight’, the Norwegian’s car features some new parts with one of the Gizmo designers Steen Graversen have worked on lightening some parts, the Dane adding that these were one off works and not viable for production.  For Q1 Berntsen said other than rebuild his diff, everything else is fine and he would leave the car as is for now.

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‘Like normal it is getting better and better’ was how Viljami summed up his practice.  Changing ‘a lot of small things’ over the four practices, the Finn said this led to improved steering for the new A800.  Set to run the car set-up unchanged for tonight’s first qualifier, he will change his tyre prep after finding the car loose at the beginning of the last practice run.

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Another driver making his DHI Cup debut at the 16th running of the event, Thailand’s Meen Vejrak would post the 5th fastest time 4/10th off his team-mate Volker.  The former nitro touring car World Champion said track conditions gave a similar feeling that of a gas car adding he also likes the track layout, which, was designed by Volker.  In terms of his Scorpion powered BD7 2016, he said he needs to make it more stable with it sliding one side more than the other.  Asked if the car was tweaked, he said ‘maybe or maybe something is loose so we will check everything over for qualifying to see what we can find’.

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In the Super Stock class, which runs a handout LRP 13.5 X20 Stock Spec motor and blinky mode speedos, it was the Kyosho of Tim Benson that set the pace.  Behind the German, Dane Mike Gosvig took his Xray to second fastest time with Tony Streit completing the Top 3.  Defending Champion Marek Cerny would post the 4th fastest time.

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January 8, 2016

Chassis Focus – Bruno Coelho

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Chassis – Xray T4 ’16
Motor – LRP X20 4.5T
ESC – LRP Flow
Battery – LRP 6000mAh
Radio/Servos – Sanwa
Body – MonTech Silvy
Remarks – Racing three classes here in Odense, Xray’s Portuguese star Bruno Coelho is running a pretty standard version of the 2016 T4 touring car from the Slovakian manufacturer. The car is equipped with low friction belts and an aluminium screws set, and sports some new orange drive shaft blades that are designed for higher durability.

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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 25, 2015

Record fifth Reedy title for Rheinard

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Marc Rheinard has claimed a record 5th Reedy International Touring Car Race of Champions title, the 18th running of the event being decided in the 36th and final race at Tamiya Raceway in California. Leading the points from the opening round right through the 3 days of heads up racing, the Tamiya star secured his first major touring car title for some time when he finished on the tail of outgoing champion Ronald Volker. Needing to win the race and have Rheinard finish 6th or lower, Volker could only manage second behind Yokomo team-mate Meen Vejrak, that win securing the Thai driver the final place on the podium.

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‘Finally a win again’, that was Rheinard’s reaction to the victory at a track the German rates as the best in the world.  Coming into the event sharing the honour of being the most crowned champion of the famous race together with Barry Baker, the 4-time World Champion said after opening the final day’s racing with a 9th place, this left him worried for the rest of the day.  Even after his win in the penultimate round when his only potential rival Volker finished third, that getting him one hand on the trophy, he ‘still wasn’t sure’ he was going to get the job done.  Getting a good start and patiently working his way to 3rd he said once he got in behind Volker he just cruised to the end but got a little concerned when Ryan Cavalieri started to close in case an attempt to pass might put him off.  Having claimed one of his two previous Reedy titles at Tamiya Raceway witnessed by the late Mike Reedy, the rc pioneer who created the World famous race format, he said ‘luckily it worked out’ and it was ‘nice to win big in touring cars again’.

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Volker said ‘overall I am happy how all my races went and to get 11 Top 3 finishes from 12 races I am proud of that’ and that he ‘delivered his best’.  Congratulating his long time arch rival on his win he said ‘even though he may have had easier heats than me in the end he delivered’.  Commenting on the deciding race the ETS Champion, who will go up against most of the field again next weekend in Luxembourg at round 5 of the championship, said after the race settled with Vejrak in the lead, him second and Rheinard third everyone cruised to the finish.  Needing Rheinard to be at the back of the field to have any chance of the title he said he also knew that Vejrak needed a Top 2 in order to get a podium finish so he didn’t risk challenging for a win that would have not changed his own overall finishing position. He said with the final step of the podium wide open going into last round he was very happy for Vejrak to secure the podium.

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Having finished 4th last year, Vejrak was delighted to go one better.  The 30-year-old former nitro touring car World Champion, having had a bad second race of the event, said he was glad to come back from that against a much higher quality field than last year and make the podium.  Having got to watch his main rival for an overall Top 3 he said he knew going into the last race what he had to do and he described his drive to his fourth win of the event as a ‘safe drive’.

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Missing out on the podium, Krapp was ‘super disappointed’ adding ‘I messed it up myself’.  He continued ‘fourth is ok for my first time at the track, the Tamiya driver being the highest placed first time visitor, ‘but I’m a racer and I want to make the podium’.  The German said in ‘Race 10 I messed it up’, referring to his off through the track’s famous kink in Round 10 that led to a DNF. Happy for his TRF team and Rheinard for taking the win he vowed to ‘come back stronger next year now that I know the track’.  Behind Krapp, Serpent’s Viktor Wilck, the driver he replaced at Tamiya, finished 5th overall with Japanese driver of the moment Akio Sobue completing the Top 6.

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