September 11, 2024

One a piece as Canas takes Q2

It is one a piece for the World Champion and European Champion in qualifying at the IFMAR 1:8 Offroad World Championship, the later, Juan Carlos Canas taking the second round of qualifying ahead of Round 1 TQ winner Davide Ongaro.  Posting a new fastest time, Canas’ Sworkz would stop the clock 3/10ths up on the World Champions Team Associated as Xray pairing Bruno Coelho and David Ronnefalk joined them on 13-laps runs.  While it has been the European drivers leading the way at RC Redovan, TLR’s Dakotah Phend continued to close the gap, the American posting a P5 for the round.

It was a clean run but I had traffic again’ was Canas’ reaction to topping Q2.  Asked how much the traffic affected his time, the Spaniard said, ‘I don’t know but maybe 1-second or more.’  With some drivers reporting the track feeling different given timing in the day, the pre-race favourite said, ‘I didn’t change my car and I feel the same grip on everything.’  Pleased with how his car and taking the approach “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” he said he plans to finish out Day 1 of qualifying with an unchanged set-up.

Ongaro was happy with his car but less pleased with his driving saying, ‘I had two stupid mistakes by myself, I crashed outside the pit lane and hit the wall and on the same lap on the chicane in the middle of the lap I lost half a second’.  The Italian continued, ‘Overall I am happy, I am super confident with car and can drive easy on 48 (second) pace.’  With three from 6 rounds to count, he plans to finish out the day with the same car and with a good result then use tomorrow to try some changes and ‘find our limits’.

Describing his run as ‘very clean’, Coelho continued, ‘towards the end I felt the car was a bit soft.  I don’t know if it was the tyres but now it is pretty hot so the tyre probably got too soft.  I also have high tyre wear now so we think they were not the perfect compound for now.  For the last 2-minutes the car was difficult to drive’.  He continued, ‘it should be colder, for sure we are going to try different things but I think the track is coming where it will completely change the compound of the tyres.  From now on I think the game of the tyres starts.  The track is getting oily now, you can see people using clays now and starting to get faster. Our set-up is there and it is all about tyres now.’

‘Another decent run I would say’, was how Ronnefalk summed up Round 2.  He explained, ‘I told the guys coming into today three rounds in the Top 4 I would be happy then I had a mistake on the pit lane in the first round and then this time I was super careful coming and going out but I still messed it up.  The pitstop itself was fast so I can’t blame pit guys but I lost 2-seconds on that pit lane, I got stuck on the tube on the exit.  That’s free time you can’t afford to give away if you want to TQ.  Obviously it won’t have been enough to challenge for the TQ but I would have been within 2-seconds again.  Another Top 4 this round is still a good score I would say’.  For Q3 the Swede ‘will try some stuff’ feeling with four rounds left he should be able to get one more strong run to lock himself into the Semis.

Upbeat about his latest performance, Phend said, ‘That was a solid, really clean run, didn’t have a bobble, we are in the ball park where we need to be car wise.  We are just kind of fine tuning and tinkering trying to find more speed.  I feel like I am driving pretty safe out there so when I know I can get more comfortable and I can hopefully push the pace more.  We are just going to keep working on the car and get a third round in and then tomorrow then we can really start to throw stuff at the car and see what we come up with.  Asked if he had been on the back foot in practice, the 2022 12th place finisher said, ‘Yesterday was a little bit of a rough day, we made a lot of progress the first two practice days but went backwards yesterday in seeding but glad to turn it around so far today so we’ll try to keep in rolling and aim to get in Semi and go from there’.

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September 11, 2024

Ongaro kicks off World title defence with TQ run

Reigning World Champion Davide Ongaro has kicked off his IFMAR 1:8 Offroad World Championships title defence with a TQ run in Spain.  The Team Associated driver, who was third fastest in seeding, would hit the top of the time sheets for the first time when he topped the first of the 6 rounds of qualifying ahead of Sworkz’s Juan Carlos Canas, the pair managing 13-laps efforts.  Third fastest with 12-laps was Bruno Coelho ahead of top seed David Ronnefalk, both Xray driver’s opening efforts affected by pitstop issues.  The Tekno of Joao Figueiredo was fifth fastest with WIRC’s Marco Baruffolo rounding out the Top 6.  With the World Championship’s back to back return to the RC Redovan track widely expected to even the field between the Europeans and the US drivers, Q1 showed that the visitors still have a bit of work to do with TLR’s Dakotah Phend their best placed driver with a P8.

Reacting to his TQ run Ongaro said, ‘It was good.  I was a bit nervous at the beginning but the feeling of the car was great and the tyres were ok now.  We also made some changes from yesterday and it was better.  It was easier to drive and I could be more comfortable.’  Asked how the run itself went he said, ‘I had one small crash after the fuel stop I just went a bit wide and out of the track and I think I lost about 8/10ths of a second, it was not a big one.’  Running Matrix Blackhole tyres, he added that apart from a clutch change for Q2 to get a bit more low end power, he plans to change nothing else.

Preferring to do his talking on the track Canas summed up his run with, ‘It was ok, one mistake but the speed is ok.  I lost around two seconds on the double double’.  Running his Reds power Sworkz the same as he finished out seeding yesterday, the Spaniard added that other than switch to a used set of tyres he will run everything the same.  Asked about today’s track conditions, he replied, ‘I have less steering and it feels less grip but I still feel good.’

Failing to go the full 10-minutes with a finishing time of 9:55.683, Coelho said the heat was, ‘Pretty good in terms of performance compared to yesterday’.  He continued, ‘Yesterday I was disappointed we were not able to understand if the changes we did were good because all the tyres came unglued.  We had a bad batch of glue so I wasn’t able to understand the changes, so for today we are thinking what should we do, keep the same set-up or go back. We risked to go with the same set-up because we believed in our work and it proved to be super good but then we made a very stupid mistake’.  Explaining the mistake he said, ‘It was like too much coincidence, it doesn’t matter now everyone is a hero and everyone is if it was me I would never but I did.  I crossed the line and there was Baruffolo behind who was finished and everyone who was crossing the line was finished.  So for me I thought this is my last lap, I did the lap crossed the loop and entered the pit lane but I had one more lap.  My mechanic was not expecting me to enter so there was nothing he could do.  You fail when you are most confident and I was too confident in what I was doing and I failed’.

Giving an account of his opening effort, Ronnefalk said, ‘Wasn’t bad at all, on track I didn’t have anything crazy happen, one lap I lost a second on it was like a 50 flat other than that it was a consistent run on track the problem was in pit lane.’  Confusion with which of the Baldo brothers had pitted, the 2016 World Champion decided to pit when he had Bryan ahead of him but it was Oscar who had pitted and Bryan came into pitlane at the same time as Ronnefalk.  ‘I came in just a little too fast hit the pipe and my car got stuck on the entry so I had to try get the car away there, turn back out, make a loop and come back in so I lost about 5-6 seconds on that stop. Remove that and I am about 1-2 seconds off Ongaro so it was a good start, even with a mistake still 4th so I am very pleased with that. It confirms speed is there in package, just need to enter pit lane a bit better next time round.’  For Q2 the Swede plans to leave his car the same based on the current conditions, the sun not as intense as yesterday.

Summing up his strong Q1 showing Figueiredo said, ‘Overall it was clean, I had one mistake on the penultimate lap and then after that I was like I am just going to take it easy until the end so I lost around 27-seconds which would have been enough for 13-laps but I still got good points.’  On his car, the 38-year-old Portuguese said, ‘there is some stuff I have been trying to figure out since yesterday but yesterday the last run was good so I decide I was going to keep the car the same and if you do a good run we can then do small changes’.  Explaining his issue with his current set-up he said, ‘I have too much dive in my front end, the initial corner is edgy so I need to be really careful with the first input on the steering’. His 5th World Championships asked about this year’s track he said, ‘Its always amazing but this year its difficult.  Us Europeans got used to what we had here before so we could drive around more chilled, now we need to be on our toes cause there are some sketchy parts you need to be really careful not to touch pipes.’

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September 11, 2024

Welcome to my World (Practice) – Marcus Kaerup

At 16-years of age he is already a double European Champion and 12-months ago on his World Championship debut he made both the 2WD and 4WD finals in Arizona but that’s in 1:10 electric.  This week however Marcus Kaerup is in Spain for the larger and noisier IFMAR 1:8 Offroad World Championship, the power and noise for the Dane’s efforts coming his Ruddog RNX22.3 engine, the German brand also supporting Red RC’s coverage from the event.  In the first of our daily columns following his progress at the spectacular sloping RC Redovan track, we caught up with Marcus to get a quick round up of how the first 3-days of practice has faired for him in his ‘second class’.

Not Marcus’ first rodeo on the biggest 1:8 Buggy stage in the World, having raced at the exact same location 2-years ago, he still classifies himself as a bit of a 1:8 newbie.  Racing since he was just 3-years-old, that very early start was most likely influenced by his dad Jonas being a former 1:10 Electric Touring Car Champion.  While having a very impressive CV in 1:10 Offroad, Marcus explains that while he ‘drives some nitro here & there’, he doesn’t get the time for much nitro testing and so he is ‘pretty new’ to the class.  Still, he competes here in Spain as the recently crowned Danish National Champion and he comes here with strong ambitions, ‘if you don’t go for win why even show up.  I have set myself a pretty high goal.’  Asked what he thinks of his playground for the week, he said ‘It’s an amazing track, really challenging for everyone, even the top guys from the US and Europe are struggling with 10-minutes or 5-minutes without crashing.’

While he normally races with his father by his side, work commitments meaning that’s not the case here, but one could say his ‘stand in’ pitman isn’t too shabby.  That pitman is none other than Team Associated team manager Brent Thielke.  Brent has vast experience of working with young up & coming talents and has been a big contributor to AE’s ever increasing tally of 32 World Championship wins.

38th in Monday’s free practice and 25th in Tuesday’s seeding Marcus finished out practice in positive form.  ‘The last seeding run was pretty good for me.  We are just working and working and working and now I think I have found something I want to drive with for the rest of the event’.  Explaining what he had found he said, ‘Overall pace and comfort in the car, I found that now so I just need to drive it now instead of focusing on one lap’.  Looking to qualifying he added, ‘I think for the qualifying it’s going to be better for me because you focus on the long run and not on every single lap you do, for me its more comfortable driving.’

We will catch up with Marcus again to see how the opening three qualifiers that make up Day 1 of qualifying fair out.

September 10, 2024

Chassis Focus – Joern Neumann (Sworkz)

Chassis – Sworkz S35-4 Evo
Engine – Nova Engines B5R Evo
Fuel – Energy
Tires – TPro
Radio/Servo – FlySky Noble NB4 Pro+ / Highest B210
Body – Sworkz

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September 10, 2024

Ronnefalk is Top Seed at Offroad Worlds

Coming into the IFMAR 1:8 Offroad World Championship in Spain with some new found confidence, Xray’s David Ronnefalk has further boosted his form for the most important bi-annual racing week of the year by claiming the Top Seed honours for the start of qualifying tomorrow.  Fastest in first seeding practice from reigning Champion David Ongaro, the former World Champion went quickest again in the second round motivated by the hard charging back to back reigning European Champion Juan Carlos Canas.  Over the counting 3-consecutive laps only 0.038 of seconds separated them.  Third fastest for the round, that is where Ongaro finds himself seeded for quali in front of Boots, the British driver struggling with the increased grip and only managed 7th fastest time time for the round.  Fourth fastest in the second run of the day, Tekno’s Joao Figueiredo is the 5th seed, one spot ahead of fellow countryman Bruno Coelho, the Xray driver having to pit during the evening run after a rear tyre parted way from the rim.

Reacting to his 8/10ths of a second improvement, Ronnefalk explained, ‘we made a couple of changes to the car for that one as I had a good car in the first one.  Also I broke in a new drivetrain to put that one aside for later in the race just to keep everything fresh towards the end. The grip was up, we saw the track was faster the heat before so I knew that it was going to be a quicker run so I had to put everything together took a couple of laps for the driver to break in.  I also had the idle set too low before going out on the track,  it died there on me once, bumped it back up and after that it was really good to the end’.  On tomorrows qualifying, Ronnefalk said, ‘It should be all good, feeling confident, car is easy to drive . Everything we’ve been trying is good, I have always been in the Top 3-5 let’s say and it seems like we are on a really good track here so hopefully we can keep it going tomorrow in qualifying.’

With the potential to give the host nation a home winner, Canas was much happier with his Sworkz second time round.  He explained, ‘I changed things on the car and the tyre compound and I didn’t like it but for the last one I tried new things and it works really really good.  Asked about tomorrow’s first day of qualifying, 3 of the sixth rounds on the schedule, the Spaniard said , ‘yeh, yeh I feel confident cause I not only made three good laps also the 10-minutes was under 50 (seconds).  It’s a really good car to drive.  Asked about further changes ahead of Q1 he replied, ‘maybe we try to make it a little safer for the 10-minute run nothing more’.

Checking in with Ongaro about his evening run, the Italian was running in Heat 14 of 15 for seeding, said ‘Overall it was better so we are happy’.  Asked how he had improved his Associated, he explained, ‘We changed tyres and it was really really good.  The only thing is they are running after me so maybe they can see if the track is faster or not so they can change tyres and stuff.  On the 10-minutes I think I am the more consistent one so I mean that’s the goal for us and we see tomorrow.’

Summing up his second seeding run Boots said, ‘from the first one we wanted to try and increase a bit of rotation in the car and get a bit more speed but the grip came up so it was like a double whammy so it became a bit more edgy to drive so we’ll go back to our previous settings.  The track is coming in now and the grip is coming up so we’ll see tomorrow how the track is but definitely in that last one a lot of people were saying the grip has come up quite a lot, you could see it watching the cars as well.  We’ll go back to the set-up we had this morning just to make the car more calm and easier to drive now the track has become more aggressive.’

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September 10, 2024

Ronnefalk fastest in first seeding round at WC

After two days of free practice, today drivers finally got down to some serious business at the IFMAR 1:8 Offroad World Championship with the first of the two seeding rounds that saw Xray’s David Ronnefalk set the pace on the sloping RC Redovan track.  The 2016 World Champion was almost a second faster than the Team Associated of defending World Champion Davide Ongaro with Elliot Boots completing the Top 3 for Sworkz.  Overall it was a good start to the day for Xray with Bruno Coelho posting the fourth fastest time just ahead of WIRC Racing’s Marco Baruffolo.  Having set the pace both on Sunday & Monday, hotly tipped race favourite Juan Carlos Canas opened the day with a P6.  The back to back reigning European Champion won the first of those title at the RC Redovan track.

Summing up his first seeding effort Ronnefalk, who was runner-up here 2-years ago said, ‘The first one was good but it started a bit weird ’cause I changed the car from yesterday to today and it was a little bit different to drive.  It was struggling to hit apex of corners ’cause my brakes were too soft and it was understeering but then the tyres broke in just enough to have the right amount of grip I would say and from 3-4 laps into the run to the end I felt really strong’.  The Swede continued, ‘I was able to put 3 laps together and it was enough for the top spot by a second or so. Definitely happy with that even though there is still some room for improvement in terms of drivability the car is fast now it is just a matter of fine tuning the small little details here and there.’  Asked about the track layout change required as part of RC Redovan hosting back to back World Championships, he said, ‘I think the track is nice it’s definitely a little easier than the previous layout they had here but still there are some tricky sections were you need to be able to carry the speed, car needs to carry a lit of corner speed on this layout, lots of 180s were you need to have the right amount of steering without car scrubbing speed to much.  I think set-up on this layout might be a little more critical to have every close to perfect.  Track flows nicely and I like it.’

The hottest day drivers have experienced so far in the South of Spain, Ongaro was pleased with how his track time was going so far stating, ‘It was good.  I think they put some fresh glue on some corners because my car was different from yesterday.  Overall I am happy.  I just try to find the 10-minutes, I don’t care about the three laps.  Comparing the layout on which he won World title two years ago to the new layout he said, ‘I think it is easier to learn but more difficult to go fast, it is more critical.  We are trying to chase how the track is changing, we change something for the second seeding and we see, so far so good.’

Winning the second of his two European Champion titles here at RC Redovan in 2016, Boots was happy with his Reds Racing powered Sworkz.  The British driver said, ‘We got 3rd in first one the car was feeling really good and comfortable.  Going to make a few minor set-up changes just to see if we can extract a few more tenths but it’s very close between a few people.  The layout is a bit different but we have a good feeling of the surface.  It’s hard to say, it could go like Euros way when it went really black line and got more grippy or it could go polished like it did when we had Neobuggy here a few years ago.  We have to see.  At the moment it is in the trending stage of which way is it going to go so we just have to keep an eye on it.  We’re in the mix, we’ve been in the Top 5 all week so far, I know its only 3-laps but we also feel good over the full run’.

Asked how he was finding the early going here at the 19th running of the World Championship, Coelho said, ‘We are still kind of learning the track finding some 10ths here some 10th there but it’s looking very good.’  Asked how the track was developing, the first seeding run the 7th time drivers got out on the track, he replied, ‘The track is changing for sure’.  The Portuguese driver continued, ‘When we started there was only glue so grip was super high now it feels like the grip is a little bit lower but at the same time there is more corner speed.  Times are faster but soon I think it will get more oily and we will need to change tyres for different compounds which will again change everything.  I am confident because we are doing pretty well on these changes since the beginning, the pace is there I was never so ready like now in the past so I am pretty confident.  Small changes now, previous days we have been changing a lot now only small changes ’cause car is on point almost.  Last round I just missed to make third lap with small bobble.  I had fastest lap which proves car is fast and my 10-minutes was also really good- 3 consecutive laps were not amazing.’

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