January 18, 2024

MIBO Champions Volker & Mugen back to defend title

With the electric touring car season about to kick off in France this weekend with GP3F, Mugen Seiki has confirmed their lead driver Ronald Volker is to defend his MIBO International title next month.  Taking place this year on February 16-18, the former World Champion won the inaugural running of the event in 2023 and will return to the popular Sports V Hotel race location in Hrotovice aiming for 2 from 2.  The German faces strong opposition with newly crowned 1:12 World Champion Michal Orlowski confirmed to head Schumacher’s official team debut in the event with Yokomo’s Christopher Krapp returning after a tough 2023 encounter.  Organised by former international touring car racer Michal Bok, the race brings together both electric onroad and offroad racing on two tracks build side by side by the team from Mibosport.  With everything from the track, restaurant, bowling alley and hotel rooms all under one roof, the venue was a hit with racers who travelled from 13 different countries last year.  With a capped entry limit the relaxed schedule also means plenty of time in the evening to wind down and socialise over dinner after each day’s racing.  With the onroad track catering for Modified, Stock & FWD Touring cars plus Formula, the Offroad track will see action for 2WD and 4WD Buggy as well an open class of ‘Offroad Kids’ that gives the future stars of racing an opportunity to be a part of this international event.  Red RC is looking forward to making the return trip to Czech to kick off our 2024 season of race coverage.

Source: MIBO [mibosport.com]

January 16, 2024

Yokomo returns for MIBO International

Having raced at the inaugural MIBO International race, Yokomo has confirmed its return for the 2nd edition of the race where it will once again be represented by ISTC World Championship podium finisher Christopher Krapp along with Enrico Jung who will contest the 17.5T Stock Touring Car class.   The Japanese manufacturer’s lead international driver, it was a character building race in the Czech Republic last year for Krapp when he finished fifth behind Eric Dankel and this time round the German will be aiming for a much more competitive showing on Feb 16-18th.  A unique event, MIBO International brings together both electric touring car and electric offroad racers on the same weekend with the building of two indoor carpet tracks side by side at the Sports V Hotel in the town of Hrotovice.   Last week Schumacher’s Michal Orlowski confirmed he would be taking on both tracks as he prepares to race both touring car and buggy at the two & a half day event.

Source: MIBO [mibosport.com]

January 11, 2024

Schumacher confirms Orlowski for MIBO International

Schumacher Racing has confirmed they will be sending their newly crowned 1:12 World Champion Michal Orlowski to the 2nd edition of MIBO International Race in Czech Republic.  Taking place on February 16-18, it will be Orlowski’s first appearance at the event and it is going to be a busy debut for the Polish driver as he is set to contest both offroad and onroad at the event.  One of the unique elements of MIBO International is the two carpet tracks the Mibosport team build side by side at the large indoor sports hall at the Sport V Hotel venue in Hrotovice allowing for offroad and onroad to run simultaneously at the same event.  The vision of former international touring car racer and Mibo founder Michal Bok, the first edition of MIBO International saw Mugen’s Ronald Volker crowned the inaugural Touring Car Champion and Xray’s Bruno Coelho take double buggy honours.

Source: MIBO [mibosport.com]

January 2, 2024

Inaugural FIRC Highlights Video

Red RC was excited to be back in China recently and to bring to a close our 2023 race coverage with the inaugural Foshan Invitation RC Championship at the new GDC Indoor track in the country’s central Guangdong Province.  The biggest international race hosted in the country post Covid, FIRC attracted a number of international racers to the impressive indoor track including former World Champion Ronald Völker.  Under the guidance of Gavin Kowk, the track has big future ambitions for establishing FIRC as one of Asia’s major annual international touring car race events to enable the country’s emerging RC talents to gauge themselves against some of the best in the business.  Check out the race’s highlights video from a hugely successful first running of the event.

December 21, 2023

’23 Foshan Invitational RC C/ship Chassis Focus Index

Last weekend saw the inaugural running of the Foshan Invitational RC Championship at the GDC Indoor Track in China’s central Guangdong Province.  The biggest international race hosted in the country post Covid, FIRC attracted a number of international racers to the impressive indoor track with former World Champion Ronald Volker taking the win ahead of an impressive drive from Chinese racer Vening Zhuo with Japan’s Yugo Nagashima completing the podium.  During our coverage of the event we featured 10 cars from 5 different manufacturers for our Chassis Focus including some of China’s top Modified Touring Car racers and we have compiled them all here in our latest Chassis Focus index.

 

Ronald Volker – Mugen Seiki (TQ & Win)

Vening Zhuo – Awesomatix (2nd)

Yugo Nagashima – Xpress (3rd)

Marco Ma – Xray

Simon Nicholson – Yokomo

Rocket Zhang – Awesomatix

Jerry Dai – Xray

Ethan Cheng – Yokomo

Hay Laichan – Xpress

Jackie Shum – Yokomo

 

December 17, 2023

Volker wins hugely successful inaugural FIRC

Mugen Seiki’s Ronald Volker has won the hugely successful inaugural Foshan Invitational RC Championship in China.  One of a number of international drivers to make the trip to the new GDC Indoor track in the central Guangdong Province, Volker completed the perfect weekend taking the TQ honours before converting that in the overall win with victory in A2.  The biggest challenger to the former World Champion would come in the form of Chinese driver Vening Zhuo who was justly rewarded for his impressive showing with second overall. Highly complimentary of Zhuo talents, Volker only discovered during the event that the driver keeping him honest all weekend was the very same person he had been offering racing advice too after he had reached out to the professional racer through social media.   An event created to give Chinese racers experience of international competition, it would be Japanese visitor and Xpress team driver Yugo Nagashima who would complete the podium for what race organiser Gavin Kwok is aiming to establish into one of Asia’s major annual international touring car races.

Reacting to his win, the race bringing a close to his 2023 season, Volker said, ‘I’m very happy to win the inaugural Foshan Invitational Championship.  It is definitely an amazing facility and I am glad to have got the opportunity to come here.  Big thanks to Gavin (Kwok) and Jackie (Shum) who organised the trip and for me to participate.  I’m also very happy with the speed of my LRP powered MTC2R, its a nice way to end the season’.  On the second A-Main the German said, ‘It again started off good.  Vening was really good and followed me for 5 or 6 laps, then he lost some pace however he showed he has a lot of talent and is one to watch for the future.  A funny story about Vening is that he messaged me before looking for some tips on racing and I was happy to help.  I didn’t realise when I got here who he was and when I did discover it was the same guy I had been messaging I thought ‘shit he can drive’.  It’s a pretty cool story.’

Taking the win in A3 just ahead of Marco Ma, Zhuo declared himself, ‘Happy but not super happy’.  He continued, ‘Volker was super fast.  He is one of the top guys and racing him motivates me to want to get quicker and become a better driver.  I am always asking Ronald questions on Facebook and it was nice to get to race against him.  FIRC has been really good event to show the level of driving at the top.’  On his A3 win, he said, ‘the start was perfect but towards the end I was not very focused and made a little mistake but I happy that I could finish second overall behind Ronald’.

Securing the final step on the podium with a trio of third places in the A-Mains, Nagashima said, ‘this track didn’t suit my car so I’m happy to get a podium’.   Also a podium finisher at the recent FEMCA Championships in Thailand, the 28-year-old had started the event as the Top Seed but admitted he struggled to adapt his car to the changing track conditions.  Despite this he said he enjoyed the inaugural event and looks forward to it becoming an annual fixture for touring car racers.

Having targeted a podium finish coming into the event, Ma was disappointed with his 4th place finish.  The Xray driver said, ‘Today was a bad luck day.  In the morning practice the car was hard to drive so we made a set-up change but it was still hard to drive in A1 & 2.  For A3 we decided to go back to the set-up we had in the morning practice because it was good yesterday and it worked’.  Finishing A3 just 0.272 behind Zhuo, it was a somewhat frustrating finish for the third place qualifier but only his third international event he said it was a good experience.

View our event image gallery here.