December 8, 2024

Five Touring Car World Champions at GDC

Nothing to see here!!  It is not every day you end up with five Touring Car World Champions at your track but that’s what Gavin Kwok found himself with this morning at his GDC Indoor track in Foshan, China.  While Bruno Coelho and Naoto Matsukura where already in town competing at the FEMCA ISTC Championship the track is hosting, Marc Rheinard, Atsushi Hara and freshly crowned Nitro Touring Car World Champion Jilles Groskamp dropped in on their way to an event their electric sponsor Team Cayote is hosting next week.  These well travelled racers were all very impressed by the GDC facilities and are expected to return and race next time they are in Foshan.


December 8, 2024

Chassis Focus – Bruno Coelho (Xray)

Chassis – Xray X4’25
ESC – Hobbywing XR10 Pro
Motor – Hobbywing V10 G3 5.0T
Battery – Sunpadow 4600mAh
Tires – Rush (handout)
Radio/Servo – Futaba 10PX / BR1
Body – Xtreme Twister

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December 8, 2024

Coelho Top Qualifier at FEMCA Championship

Bruno Coelho is the Top Qualifier at this year’s FEMCA ISTC Championship, the Xray driver picking up where he left off yesterday to top the third round of qualifying this morning in Foshan, China.  Faced with low traction conditions for the 3rd of the 5 scheduled qualifier, this would prove to be Coelho’s slowest TQ run so far with the World Champion unable to match the two 25-lap runs he posted in yesterday’s opening two qualifiers around the GDC Indoor track.  Again it was Infinity’s Naoto Matsukura who presented the biggest challenge, the gap however at the end of the 5-minutes still significant at 3.3-seconds this time round.  After a slow opening lap, Shin Sawada would recover to complete the Top 3 times, the Xray driver benefiting from his fellow countryman Kouki Kato rolling his Infinity on the curbing coming onto the main straight on lap 16 which cost him over 2.5 seconds.  Behind Kato, the Awesomatix of Rocket Zhang led the home challenge, the well known Chinese driver rounding out the Top 5 ahead of the similar car of Maxim Laverychev.

Reacting to the first run of the morning Coelho said, ‘It was pretty slippery this morning.  I think the track was for some reason much more slippy than yesterday.  I hope the track conditions will get better for the next round.  If not for sure we will have to change our set-up to generate more traction’.  Asked its thoughts on the low traction he said, ‘The tyres are getting more and more worn so they should be better so there is no reason for this low traction but I hope it gets better for the next one’.  Pleased to lock in the overall TQ early, the Portuguese driver said this gives him the option to use the last two rounds to try some more ‘drastic’ changes on the car.

A driver who has struggled to get traction, asked about his Q3 performance, Matsukura replied, ‘today the traction is even lower.’  Having checked over his car after crashing heavily into a marshal’s foot yesterday and thankfully found nothing to be damaged, the Japanese driver said he didn’t make any set-up changes for this morning but somewhat left scratch his head on how to find improvement said he now he must think what he can do for the remaining two rounds concluding ‘we need to try a new idea’.

‘No grip today, yesterday was so so, today no grip so I had to drive safe’, was how Sawada summed up Q3.  Having had a mistake while running P2 in yesterday’s second qualifier that dropped him to P3, the 20-year-old said this morning’s run was clean but ‘just too slow’.  Asked if he planned to wait to see if the track improves for the penultimate qualifier or change his car, he replied, ‘I will change the set-up.  I will make the car more narrow, narrow hubs.’  Having run 2.5 rear toe he will also go to 3 degrees for the next one.

View our event image gallery here.


December 8, 2024

Chassis Focus – Jerry Dai (Xray)

Chassis – Xray X4’24
ESC – Hobbywing XR10 PRO G3
Motor – Hobbywing G3 5.0T
Battery – GensAce 5000mAh
Tires – Rush (handout)
Radio/Servo – Sanwa M17
Body – Xtreme Twister

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December 8, 2024

Chassis Focus – Kouki Kato (Infinity)

Chassis – Infinity IF14-MID
ESC – ORCA OE1 MKII
Motor – ORCA M3 5.0T
Battery – ORCA 4290mAh
Tires – Rush (handout)
Radio/Servo – Sanwa M17S / PGS LH2
Body – Xtreme Twister Speciale

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December 7, 2024

Coelho holds overnight FEMCA TQ in China

Bruno Coelho holds the overnight TQ at the FEMCA ISTC Championship in China, the Xray driver topping the opening two rounds of qualifying today at the GDC Indoor track in Foshan.  Having topped seeding, the World Champion would take the first of the 5 scheduled qualifiers ahead of Naoto Matsukura and it looked it was going to be a similar result in Q2 until the Japanese driver’s Infinity got stopped suddenly in its tracks by the foot of a marshal.  While Matsukura would eventually continued to claim a P4 run, it was his team-mate Koki Kato and Xray’s Shin Sawada who would benefit to end the round with the 2nd & 3rd fastest times respectively.  Overall however Matsukura still holds P2 going into tomorrow morning’s final 3-rounds of qualifying despite ending the day on 6-points together with Kato & Sawada.

‘It was a good day’ was how Coelho summed up holding the overnight TQ.  He continued, ‘for the last one we tried some things on the car to make it a little easier but I think it was a little bit slower now, but it was safe to drive.’  Having found the car a little difficult in Q1 he explained, ‘It was super fast but I felt it was sometime a little bit difficult because I can feel during the run there are some moments where the tyre or something starts to be a bit weird and I need to adapt to it so I just wanted to make sure I can make 5-minutes and the car is consistent so in the final I have no problem.  The car now was more on that way but a little slower in pace’.  Looking to the remaining qualifiers in the morning, the World Champion said, ‘We will for sure try something in between (the two set-ups) for tomorrow morning.’

Returning to the pits worried about the impact to his car, Matsukura said for Q1, ‘the traction was lower so my car was a little loose but I still got second by driving around. Bruno and me are almost 4-seconds apart so I need my speed.’  On the second qualifier he explained that following Kato making the change for Q1 with good results, ‘I added more rear toe in and the grip was OK but still I need more, anyway I got unlucky.’   Hitting a marshalling foot as they crossed the track to attend to another driver’s body tuck, it was a big impact.  Continuing the run, asked if his car was OK, the 2014 ISTC World Champion replied, ‘I don’t think so but I will check it now.’

Giving his reaction at the conclusion of Day 1 of qualifying Kato said, ‘For me it was OK but my first 2-laps I am very slow.  This is a problem all the time, I can’t push at the start, I don’t have the rear traction.’  Having felt at the end of practice his consistency over 5-minutes was going to cause him issues in qualifying, asked if he had improved on this aspect of the run he replied, ‘my consistent was just ok because I just make a safe drive.  I need push more tomorrow.’

On summing up his qualifying efforts, Sawada, stated, ‘It was no good.’  He explained, ‘I had understeer in the first one and in the second one the rear was too loose.’   Removing his side body stiffeners for Q1 to try and get more steering he said it didn’t work adding he found the traction in Q1 to be low.   Adding new carbon stiffener, having ran lexan versions earlier, he also added PSS for the second qualifier.  Giving him more steering he said the rear became loose.  Running P2 after Matsukura’s incident, that lack of rear traction was something that would lead to a mistake at he end of the run that dropped him to P3.

View our event image gallery here.