Red RC - RC Car News

Xtreme Racing have introduced new front and rear carbon fibre shock towers for the TLR 8ight 4.0 buggy. The front shock stay is machined from 5mm carbon fibre while the rear variant is made of slightly thinner 4mm material, the towers are direct replacements for the stock alloy parts and they are available separately.

Source: Xtreme Racing [xtremercracing.com]

The fourth and final round of the Western German Nitro On-road Championship was held in Velp in the Netherlands. Nearly fifty racers made their entry for the event on the flowing and challenging 260-meter track. On Saturday, everybody was on fire using every single minute for intense practice and preparations. Just when the drivers briefing was held on Sunday morning, it started to drizzle which effected the early rounds of qualifying heats. Most of the drivers opted to do some laps on the slippery track in order to get into the ranking lists but racing at full throttle was on again during round three of the heats.

Once again Tobias Hepp was the top qualifier in the fast 1/8th scale class 1. In a blistering style he squeezed his ARC to 23 laps. Already one lap down were John Ermen (ARC) as well as the Serpent duo of Michael Salven and Merlin Depta on positions two, three and four. The 20-minutes semifinals were won by Hepp and Ermen with both legs offering fierce competition. Michael Salven was a prominent victim and had to retire because of a transmission issue. In the 30-minutes main final Tobias Hepp could open-up a gap from the start and he led the race until his sudden retirement when his ARC was hit in lap 87 by another car which came back from the outside onto the racing line. Hepp had no chance to avoid the collision which caused a broken steering, and once again he had bad luck while leading a finale in this year’s season. The incident allowed Ermen to take over the lead with Depta on his tail. Some rain drops made it difficult at the end but finally Ermen brought home his third consecutive victory. Depta was still in the lead lap and gave the brand-new Serpent 988 Viper its first podium finish. Shepherd racer Schroeder, like Depta a guest entry from Germany’s Northern region, was lucky to make it into the final but drove a solid race to gain position by position and finally made it from 10th at the start to 3rd on the podium. Without practicing on Saturday, Frank Schewiola brought his Shepherd home in 4th with Mugen racer Christian Wurst in 5th. Having to retire because of a broken engine, veteran Karl-Heinz Meister missed the chance to make a present to his own following his birthday on Saturday.

1/8th class 1 final results:
1. John Ermen – ARC – 119 laps
2. Merlin Depta – Serpent – 119
3. Timo Schroeder – Shepherd – 116
4. Frank Schewiola – Shepherd – 115
5. Christian Wurst – Mugen – 113
6. Emil Kostadinov – Mugen – 111
7. Gunther van Staey – Serpent – 109
8. Tobias Hepp – ARC – 87
9. Karl-Heinz Meister – Serpent – 42
10.Augustin Mejor – Serpent – 20

With three wins in three races and the maximum point score of 363, John Ermen became the new Western German Champion. Tobias Hepp (356) captured the vice-championship title in front of Christian Wurst (355), 2016 champion Steven Cuypers (Mugen/344) and Bulgarian Emil Kostadinov (Mugen/344). A total of 26 drivers collected points in the 2017 season in 1/8th scale class 1.

Another strong performance of ARC was seen in class 2 of the 1/8th nitro on-road category. Robbin Hertong took the TQ on home soil in front of Mugen racer Waldemar Liedke and Serpent driver Christoph Loose. The semifinals meant the end of the race day for Andre Boettcher (Mugen) and Hans-Peter Holl (Serpent) which were among the top ten following the heats. Hertong and 15-year old David Kroeger (Shepherd) snatched the victories in the two semifinals, and Hertong again showed a strong performance leading the 30-minutes main from tone to tone. Coming from 4th on the grid, young and talented Kroeger fought his way up to 2nd position and made it to the podium for the seventh time in seven races during the 2017 season so far. Loose completed the podium in 3rd, with Liedke coming in 4th place. Beside David Kroeger and Augstin Mejor, Pieter Beekman (Shepherd) was the third youngster who made it into the final to finish 6th in 1/8 class 2.

1/8th class 3 final results:
1. Robbin Hertong – ARC – 124 laps
2. David Kroeger – Shepherd – 120
3. Christoph Loose – Serpent – 119
4. Waldemar Liedke – Mugen – 117
5. Martin Baumann – Mugen – 115
6. Pieter Beekman – Shepherd – 115
7. Gunnar Blumendahl – Mugen – 113
8. Jens Kopetzki – Serpent – 105
9. Heiko Kube – Mugen – 97
10.Matthias Guenther – Shepherd – 19

With only one 1/8th scale race in 2016, 15-year old David Kroeger celebrated an impressive title win in his first season. He became Western German Champion with 359 points followed by Waldemar Liedke (357), Christoph Loose (347), Gunnar Blumendahl (Mugen/346), Ingo Braun (Serpent/338) and Bert Poesen (Mugen/338). 34 racers attended the 1/8th scale class 2 in four races of the 2017 season.

In 1/10th scale Nitro Touring Melvin Diekmann continued his awesome dominance. The Shepherd ace caught took TQ in front of teammate Bernd Rausch and Serpent’s Daniel Thiele. Rausch followed Diekmann on his tail only in the early stage of the 30-minutes finale and then Diekmann cruised to victory with a one lap advantage over Rausch. Even some rain wouldn’t cause any distress for Diekmann who celebrated his seventh win in seven races in Western Germany. Majuran Tharmalingam secured the 3rd position on the podium and left Serpent fellow Thiele on fourth.

1/10th scale Nitro Touring final results:
1. Melvin Diekmann – Shepherd – 109 laps
2. Bernd Rausch – Shepherd – 108
3. Majuran Tharmalingam – Serpent – 105
4. Faehd Labik – Shepherd – 104
5. Daniel Thiele – Serpent – 102
6. Georg Goehlich – KM – 95

With four wins in four races of the championship, Melvin Diekmann is the well-deserved Champion. With 363 points he left his four Shepherd fellows Marco Nenner (352), Bernd Rausch (349), Benjamin Lehmann (348) and Faehd Labik (344) behind on position two to five among the 19 1/10th scale racers that competed this season.

As for the overall statistics, Mugen and Serpent were the leading chassis brands with a total of twelve cars each followed by ten Shepherd, four ARC, three Xray and one KM. Nitro racing in Western Germany will continue with round 4 of the Nitro-West-Masters from the 5th to 6th of August in Bad Breisig. The race is also the official warm-up for the German 1/8th Nationals which will take place at this track from the 24th to 27th of August. The 1/10 Nationals will be held from the 20th to 24th September in Munster in the south of Hamburg.

Source: Nitro-West [nitro-west.de]

Team Orion have released a first image of their new Vortex Ultimate Modified brushless motor. Like the Ultimate Stock variant, the modified motor, that won the 4WD Buggy class at last weekend’s Hot Rod Hobbies Shootout in the hands of Xray’s Ty Tessmann, will offer increased performance and efficiency and it is available in 4.5T to 8.5T variants with a 6.5T 1/12th scale specific version becoming available also.

Source: Team Orion [teamorion.com]

Round 3 of Turkish TORC Nationals was held at the Efmod track recently in hot and windy weather conditions. Xray’s Mustafa Alp made clean sweeps in the Nitro Touring and Electric Prostock classes to secure the pole positions for the main finals. In the opening two electric A-mains Mustafa never looked back to take dominant win while the battle for the runner-up spot was between young Ahmet and Poyraz. In A1 and A2 Poyraz held the upper hand thanks to fresher tyres but in A3, that Mustafa sat out, Ahmet took the win which equalled the overall 2nd place for him while Poyraz had to settle for 3rd.

Prostock final results:
1. Mustafa Alp – Xray
2. Ahmet Kasap – Xray
3. Poyraz Serezlioglu – Xray
4. Onur Karacuhalilar – Xray
5. Yasin Yenidunya – Xray
6. Berk Ogretmen – Xray
7. Sefer Kursad Alalma – Xray
8. Murat Cagis – Xray
9. Emirhan Savas – Xray
10.Burak Ozcan – Xray

In the 45-minute long Nitro Touring main final TQ holder Mustafa lead from start to finish with the only problem being a flameout during the tyre change. Like in the Prostock class the battle for 2nd on the podium was very entertaining. Onur Vardar and Halit Körpe was the pair to watch after Onur recovered from a flame out at the beginning of the race. With 3 laps to go he overtook Halit and claimed the 2nd place with the two being separated by only 0.9 seconds on the line.

Nitro Touring final results:
1. Mustafa Alp – Xray
2. Onur Vardar – Xray
3. Halit Korpe – Xray
4. Poyraz Serezlioglu – Xray
5. Utku Kizildag – Xray
6. Ekinci Mert – Xray
7. Serdar Sakallioglu – Xray
8. Kagan Aydin – Xray
9. Mert Koroglu – Xray
10.Haluk Soyyoruk – n/a

Source: Xray [teamxray.com]

Coming from Serpent and made for the SRX8 nitro buggy are two new brake collar sets. They are machined from high-quality aluminium, sport a knurled design for convenient handling and they are now also available in orange and black colour to add to the already existing grey ones. The parts come in sets of two, including grub screws and beside the SRX8 they also fit many other nitro vehicles.

Source: Serpent [serpent.com]

The Swedish On-road National Championship was recently held at the Örebro track in 1/8th Nitro On-road, 1/10th 200mm Nitro Touring and 1/10th Electric Touring categories. In the 200mm class main final Mickael Brandt would immediately open a gap on the field right from the start despite a hard-charging Per-Ola Hard that in turn was chased by Anders Mikkelsen and Petter Solvberg. Shortly before his 4:30 pitstop Mickael’s car ran out of fuel and it looked like everything was lost for Mickael but Per-Ola’s car also stopped while leaving the pits and so Brandt was back in the game. While trying to recover, Mickael made a mistake while passing a car on the main straight which send him further down the field. While making his way up the field again Mickael lost more time due to a flame out but pulling the fastest laps allowed him to gain a lot of places and right before his planned tyre change at half-time he was back in the lead again. Drivers on different tyre strategies mixed things up in the second half of the race but ultimately Mickael was able to bring home the win some two laps in front of Per-Ola Hard while Erika Hellquist rounded out the podium result a couple of laps down.

1/10 Nitro final results:
1. Mickael Brandt – Xray
2. Per-Ola Hard – n/a
3. Erika Hellquist – Xray
4. Hans Elmerfors – n/a
5. Anders Mikkelsen – Shepherd
6. Thomas Gidlund – Serpent
7. Ake Tornros – Xray
8. Petter Solvberg – Capricorn
9. Ronnie Pettersson – Capricorn
10.Ashor Denkha – Xray

Source: Xray [teamxray.com]

Schumacher bring back the “good ol’ times” with the Cat retro T-shirt. With the imminent release of the CAT XLS Masami 1/10th vintage buggy, racers can recreate the look from that era with the white cotton shirt with original blue logos. The shirt is available in adult S to XXXXL sizes.

Source: Schumacher [racing-cars.com]

Round 4 of this year’s RC LeMans Series was held this past weekend at the Model Race Genk Club in Belgium. Known for its low traction the track still presented itself in good condition thanks to the outstanding work of the club members, a lot of cleaning and even sugar prepping. In the fast LMP1 class Tobias Weist, Tim Altmann and Reinder Wilms traded the top spots and ultimately it was Tim who took the TQ from Reinder and Tobias. Kai Altmann came in 4th, Patrick Vannieuenhuysen completed the top 5 result.

In LMP2 round 3 winner, Andreas Dick was the man to beat as he took all three qualifiers with a 1-lap margin. Mathijs Hermens held a 3-seconds advantage over Jörn Bauer in 3rd while Rainer Schad and Franz-Jakob Reinartz rounded out the top 5.

The LMP1 finals held a lot of racing action. A1 saw Tim walking away with the win after a 3-horse battle with Reinder and Tobias. Unfortunately the latter suffered a DNF which made way for Timo Schad. A2 then was a blueprint of A1 with the top 3 pulling away from the field until Tim clipped a curb which made way for Reinder. About mid-race Tobias found a way past Reinder who made a mistake which gave Tobias room to breathe. Maintaining the gap, Tobias brought home the win in A2 from Timo Schad 2nd and Tim 3rd. Before A3 four drivers were in the mix for the overall win. After a good start and an unlucky move on Reinder, Tobias was out of the race for the top spots while up front Tim and Reinder delivered a great show. Unfortunately Reinder later suffered mechanical gremlins soon after finding a way past Tim. This allowed to latter to bring home an unchallenged win from a storming Timo Schad. Tobias recovered and brought home P3 which was enough to take the overall runner-up spot in the tie-breaker from Timo in 3rd.

In the LMP2 finals it was again Andreas who excelled. Winning A1 and A2 in style while also scoring the fastest qualifier, fastest final time and also the fastest lap in the Stock class meant the other could just watch and learn. In the end Andreas was sidelined by Jörn, who scored his first podium result, and Rainer who completed the podium.

Source: RC LeMans [rc-lemans.de]

The 1/10th Buggy Israeli League was held recently and it was Guy Rinkevich who took wins in both the 2WD and 4WD classes. Yosi Abel obtained the runner-up spot in both categories while Tom Mushkatel rounded out the podium in 2WD and Avi Yadgar completed the podium result in the 4WD class.

Source: Xray [teamxray.com]

Gubbio in Italy played host to the 2017 Hot Race Summer Cup this past weekend. As usual the event attracted some of the country’s fastest electric on-road drivers and also guests from abroad with the 2017 edition drawing close to 100 entries for the four different on-road categories. While the racing action on the track was intense there was also a lot to do off the track with the organisers made sure everyone had a great time with loads of drinks, music and the famous Saturday evening party. Racing wise and in the Invitational Modified class it was Alessio Menicucci who took the TQ and win from Alessio Mancini and former 200mm World Champion, Alexander Hagberg in 2nd and 3rd respectively.

Invitational Modified Touring final results:
1. Alessio Menicucci
2. Alessio Mancini
3. Alexander Hagberg
4. Alessio Tolomelli
5. Viljami Kutvonen
6. Mario Spiniello
7. Leo Arnold
8. Manu Vagner
9. Lorenzo Bigi
10.Marco Baruffolo

The Touring Modified category saw Silvio Boni coming out fastest after the A-mains from Enrico Avoni and Max Micheli.

Modified Touring final results:
1. Silvio Boni
2. Enrico Avoni
3. Massimo Micheli
4. Micolo Grisenti
5. Davide Rabitti
6. Matteo Menchetti
7. Florian Joos
8. Simone D’Ottavio
9. Simone Pagnini
10.Biagio Esposito Lauri

The win in the Touring Stock class went to Danish frontrunner, Soren Boy Holst with Alessio Mancini and Simone Alleotti rounding out the top 3 result.

Stock Touring final results:
1. Soren Boy Holst
2. Alessio Mancini
3. Simone Alleotti
4. Djalama Bochicchio
5. Vincenzo Vazzana
6. Florian Joos
7. Walter Cola
8. Maurizio Bicchi
9. Emanuele Schillaci
10.Simone Leonardi

Finally in the Cinquone 299 fun class it was Simone Pavanello with the win in front of Matteo Berlincioni and Alberto Fontanini. Sandro Gavazzoni and Alessandro Rossi would round out the top 5 result.

Source: Hot Race Tyres [hotracetyres.com]