Two weeks ago we posted about the Italian Radiosistemi prototype car Riccardo Rabitti ran on his way to finishing on the podium at the first round Italian Nats. Having started on pole for the final, he went backwards, taking P3 in the end - he wasn't entirely happy with the result and the message from 'UFORicky' and the the Radiosistemi camp was that more hard work was needed to find time in the car.
Since we last looked, there have been a few changes made compared with the prototype we showed you two weeks ago, the first is purely aesthetic; black anodizing now coats almost every alu part on the car, however whilst that might please the eye it doesn't do much to make a car faster...
The 2012 FORCE Series (Florida Off-Road R/C Competiton Events) has come to an end. Agama and Hobby-Pro USA is proud to announce their most recent victories from the sunny state of Florida. Team driver, Gene Hickerson, drove his Agama A8 buggy and A8T truggy to victory by claiming the 2012 FORCE Series championship title in BOTH the 1/8 Pro Buggy and 1/8 Pro Truggy classes. Congrats to Gene THE MACHINE Hickerson on his great performance. Winning a series race is a true testament to Hobby Pro USA's great product line. Fellow Hobby Pro USA and Agama Driver Joey "Batman" Perez finished up in a very respectable 2nd place over-all in the Pro Buggy Class as well. SEE: www.hobbyprousa.com
The first round of the 1/8th Buggy Finish Nationals was held in Turku under tricky conditions. In the morning we had some rain and heavy wind and in the afternoon weather came clearer, but wind got stronger which made driving over the jumps very challenging. After 3 rounds of Qualifying Tomi Salonen was 1st, followed by August Poutiainen and Ari Heinonen. After semi-finals the top six was Salonen followed by Poutiainen, Heinonen, Leino, Ahoniemi and Siltanen. In the A-final, we saw a tight battle between Salonen and Poutiainen pulling away from the rest of the field. After 13 minutes Poutiainen was leading by several seconds until he had a crash with another car and broke his Xray and was forced to retire. Salonen took the lead and controlled the rest of the final easily. Many drivers suffered from flame outs and crashes during the hard 45 minute windy final. Final results: 1) Salonen Tomi / Mugen / Novarossi 2) Heinonen Ari / Kyosho / JQ 3) Leino Teemu / Hot Bodies / LRP 4) Ahoniemi Simo / Mugen / Novarossi 5) Heinonen Arto / JQ / ? 6) Lehtojärvi Jethro / Xray / LRP 7) Mört Max / JQ / Alpha 8) Peltomaa Harri / Mugen / Novarossi 9) Lyijynen Tommi / Losi / Novarossi 10) Thusberg Tom / Kyosho / Novarossi 11) Siltanen Jarno / Mugen / Novarossi 12) Poutiainen August / Xray / Ninja
Nathan Powney reports - So on Sunday 13th May it was time for the 2nd round of the Popular Midland Based Regional series and with the meeting running on my own club track I felt confident with my setup that my car would be capable of at least an A final grid position. On the Saturday I went down to the track early to open up the track for the days practice and get a load of jobs completed around the track ready for the Sundays meeting and setup all the equipment, as the day went on I had 2 or 3 practice goes and was happy with the car but felt i needed more speed, so once practice was closed and checking the sheet on who was claiming fastest laps on the shortened circuit I found that my laps were 2nd fastest of the day. Very pleased with the Intech setup i opted to run a 14t clutchbell for the Sundays racing due to the long straight that we had setup. Onto Sunday I arrived around 7.30am and setup all my gear, once I had checked in with TMSC series organisers that they had everything they needed and the track was all tidy ready to race my day could get serious. Read More...
2. Jon Howells, 1. Craig Drescher, 3. Nathan Powney
A little video this afternoon from World Championship winning Team Orion, showing us some unprecedented footage of what it takes to produce race-winning engines. The video is part of their promotional push for the 2012 CRF series of 3 buggy engines and the T522 truggy engine, the three buggy engines have in Orion's own words, been "completely reorganised... There are two Factory Team engines with hand-made tuning and ceramic ball bearings and one Racing Team engine with some reduced specs at a great price!" To read more and see the specs & features head over to Team Orion's 2012 CRF page
Promoters for September's 'Italian Job' race in Italy (of all places!) have put together the following video showcasing some of the talent that will be present at the race which will be held at the highly regarded Asti track.
Worlds Warm up entry open The 2012 World Championship organisers have launched parts of their event website www.argentina2012wc.com.ar and have opened entry to the slightly controversial warm up event which will be held at the end of September (26-30), despite the late announcement of the warm up, the top pros will be keen to get any practice they can, although with rumours of a complete track overhaul between the warm up and the main event, the value of attending 'for practice' could be limited. Watch this space.
Jörn Neumann reports - The 2nd Round was held in Hürtgenwald on an astroturf track. The weather was great all weekend. On Saturday was first free practice for a couple hours and then 3 Rounds of controlled practice. I tried some different shock setups and a 3mm front swaybar. This made my car much better and faster. I changed nothing for the 1st Round of qualifying. I finished 2nd, made one mistake and had some traffic. On Sunday were two more Rounds of qualifying. In Round two, I was on a good pace, but had a problem after 2 minutes. The last Round worked really well with a TQ. This was also enough for the overall TQ. For the semi-final I changed the front and centre diff from 7K to 20K, to get more acceleration out of the corners. This worked out and I won my semi-final. The main final started really bad, with a problem on the start. I lost more than 10 seconds and started from the pit lane. I pushed really hard and worked my way back to third after a couple of minutes. I caught up a few tenths every lap to the leaders. We decided to pit safe at 7minutes in the 20 minutes main. Both leaders tried to pit at 10. During the pit stops with some fast laps I was back in the lead and pulled away to have enough of a gap for my second fuel stop. In the end I won by half a lap over second.
Format: 2 5 minute IFMAR Rounds, 20 Nitro finals and 10 minute electric final. The 2012 JBRL Nitro Series is in full swing and the second stop on the series took place last weekend at Revelation Raceway with over 200 entries. Many of the world’s best were on hand including the current World Champion Cody King, Ryan Cavalieri, Adam Drake, Mike Truhe, Ryan Maifield, Travis Amezcua, Dylan Rodriguez, Richard Saxton, and Steve Hartson. The layout started out smooth and high speed, but by the end of the weekend is was very technical and rough. It was Adam Drake who dominated the event by winning three classes. In the 1/8th electric class Drake had problems in both rounds of qualifying stripping two plastic spur gears and ended up in the B Main. Drake won the B Main, but a large margin and started 13th on the grid in the A Main. In the 10 minute A Main Drake worked his way through the pack, but the leader Hartson was gone until he made a few mistakes which allowed Drake to close, then take the lead and pull a way to more than a 10 second lead. Drake’s TLR 8ight E 2.0 powered by Tekin electronics and Pro-Line M4 Holeshot 2.0’s was on rails in the final. Read More... E Buggy: 1st Adam Drake / TLR 8ight 2.0 / Tekin / Tekin / Losi / Pro-Line Holeshot 2.0 (M4) 2nd Steven Hartson (TQ) / AE / JC 3rd Ryan Hughes / Tekno
Qualifying started smoothly for the 2012 E-Buggy National Championships. Racers were greeted with fair weather and the Circulo Verde Track established by the QCRCCC club was in great condition for Off-Road racing. World renowned Race Organizer/Announcer SCOTTY ERNST was on hand to run the race and share his valuable experience for the event. The A-Main finals began with fireworks as the top 3 were all bunched up and battling it out for the lead. These were TQ Jordan Go, Denis Lucindo & Emer Agero. After the first few laps, Denis took a hard earned lead. Toward the halfway point of the race, Denis lost his lead with an error which gave Emer the opportunity to head the pack with a hard-charging Jordan right behind him. After a few laps Jordan took over by making a quick pass on Emer. Jordan held the lead until the last minute of the race when he made an error and gave up the lead to Denis. Jordan though quickly got it back with a few seconds to go in the race and managed to cross the loop just as the AMB decoder sounded to win the A-1 Race and even have a solo victory lap. Read More...
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Two weeks ago we posted about the Italian 
A little video this afternoon from World Championship winning Team Orion, showing us some unprecedented footage of what it takes to produce race-winning engines. The video is part of their promotional push for the 2012 CRF series of 3 buggy engines and the T522 truggy engine, the three buggy engines have in Orion's own words, been "completely reorganised... There are two Factory Team engines with hand-made tuning and ceramic ball bearings and one Racing Team engine with some reduced specs at a great price!" To read more and see the specs & features head over to 
Jörn Neumann reports - The 2nd Round was held in Hürtgenwald on an astroturf track. The weather was great all weekend. On Saturday was first free practice for a couple hours and then 3 Rounds of controlled practice. I tried some different shock setups and a 3mm front swaybar. This made my car much better and faster. I changed nothing for the 1st Round of qualifying. I finished 2nd, made one mistake and had some traffic. On Sunday were two more Rounds of qualifying. In Round two, I was on a good pace, but had a problem after 2 minutes. The last Round worked really well with a TQ. This was also enough for the overall TQ. For the semi-final I changed the front and centre diff from 7K to 20K, to get more acceleration out of the corners. This worked out and I won my semi-final. The main final started really bad, with a problem on the start. I lost more than 10 seconds and started from the pit lane. I pushed really hard and worked my way back to third after a couple of minutes. I caught up a few tenths every lap to the leaders. We decided to pit safe at 7minutes in the 20 minutes main. Both leaders tried to pit at 10. During the pit stops with some fast laps I was back in the lead and pulled away to have enough of a gap for my second fuel stop. In the end I won by half a lap over second.
