TITC 2013 - ATSUSHI HARA WINS !!

I am a big fan of Atsushi and very happy to see him win big again.
Here are the first shots of his winning machine with which he dominated the event, getting TQ in all his runs, Lap record and two wins in the Amains.
At a quick first glance I noticed new central mounted floating servo mount, new low profile shock towers and short shocks with new shock caps.

On the occasion here are the cars of Satoshi and Marc from Tamiya. Satoshi's car features a new motor mount which places the motor further inside to the chassis. This was also spoted on Jilles' car and it is believed that TAMIYA were testing different configurations using parts from YOKOMO's BD7.

Source: rcfans.com

2012 EP TC Nats - Round 1

So, finally the first race of our National Championship was run this past weekend.
I had raced the A700 only once before, a few weeks ago with good results and tested it in total for 5 runs. For some strange reason I stay approximately 5-6 hours at the track on Saturdays but only manage to practice twice or three times as I keep spending my time fooling around with friends and helping out others instead of focusing on the purpose I’ve actually came for in the first place.  Anyway that’s the most fun part of our hobby and wouldn’t change it for a thing.


Saturday’s practice had gone pretty well and I chose to leave the car as it was. I only did a couple of runs which I thought were enough to get me into racing mode.  The car felt great.

Sunday morning was a bit different.
Conditions were great, bright sun and descent temperature around 15 degrees but track felt like had lower grip than the day before. During the morning’s practice run I chose to scrub-in the new set of tyres that I’d use in Qualifying and to my surprise the car felt pretty unstable.
Anyway I decided to gamble and since we have a limit of two sets of tyres for the whole race, I chose to skip the first qualifying run and run the 2^nd only, hoping that track conditions would improve. That didn’t work out as planned as starting from 10^th position I had a lot of traffic in front and my run was quite messy. The car also did not have good pace either so the track had not improved since the morning.  I got 2^nd position overall, about 4 seconds behind the leader which was quite a lot.
I really wanted to get the TQ spot so I run the 3^rd and final qualifying run. I knew that with used tyres my chances to improve where not good but I tried my best and in the end managed to get TQ by only 0.3 of second! That was really lucky!

Finals were very exciting.  I lost the first one following a great pass by my friend Nick Geo.  and then a failed attempt of mine to re take the lead. The second one was less exciting as Nick made an error and lost ground which allowed me to get an easier win, although I made a few errors.
The last and deciding final was really nerve breaking. Nick was again glued to the back of my car. He was very careful not to make contact and was looking for an error of mine. Around the 2^nd minute the error came and he went nicely through to take the lead. I expected this so I tried to maintain focus and concentrated on making clean laps.  In the end I got my chance, re took the lead but it was short lived as Nick and I made contact.  The referee called Nick to wait for me to recover and then a messy lap followed where we touched a few more times. In the end I was handed the win as Nick on his last attempt to pass me dived a bit too deep and could not avoid contact with my car so he was again asked to wait until I recover my position. The finish line was only a few meters ahead and I crossed it first leaving Nick in second place.
It was a bitter sweet win but I guess that’s racing. 
I would describe my performance as average as my driving was very inconsistant making unforced errors and contact that was avoidable.
A bit of luck on my side made the difference in the final result.
Now I need to do a bit of more practice and learn what to change on my car when conditions change. It might have been something as simple as change in diff oil to make the car more stable, but being afraid of making it worse, I chose to run with what I had and just fight it out.

Following are videos of the 3 Amain finals and some photos from www.rcdevil.gr who will shortly post a full report of the race with a less biased point of view than mine!

I suggest you view the videos in full screen mode.
Enjoy!

HB/HPI RACING 21XZ-R HARA EDITION

Sources: 1. www.frt.gr

                                2. HB/HPI Hara Edition

KYOSHO Annual GRANDPRIX 2011

Every year KYOSHO organize their annual GrandPrix race at the BossSpeed race track in Japan.
As far as I know this track will be the host club for the 2013 IFMAR 1/8 Onroad World Championships.
Here are 2 videos showing in sequence the 20 minute main final in the 1/8th scale class.

and here is an older clip from the driver's stand showing the demanding layout of this technical track:

Sources: http://paintkura.blog85.fc2.com/

http://www.kyosho.com/

National CUP 2011

A great action photo, shot by my friend Chris Zotalis.

So the final race of the year is now history and it went quite well for me since I won with some ease. Competition is not quite at the top level it used to be in this class as it has suffered a lot in the past few years with low number of entries and limited involvment from most hobby shops so it was expected that I would do well as I am one of the most experienced and involved in this class.

The positive part is that the race was nice and fun, the people participating enjoyed it and quite a few more have expressed their interest in competing in this class in 2012.  Should this be the case I am always more than willing to share my knowledge and assist any new or old racers to improve their performance.

Below is a series of photos from the car in its latest form in which I won the National Cup race for 2011 and at the end a .pdf file of my set up.

Set up sheet :

http://data7.blog.de/media/753/6069753_a49b1bf964_d.pdf

2012 IFMAR 1/10 EP Touring & 1/12 World Championships

The organizers of the 2012 IFMAR World Championships for 1/10 and 1/12 electric powered cars have posted a great video

for more information visit the official website here:

2012 IFMAR 1/10 & 1/12 electric Worlds

HB TCX - New parts

I added a few more of the latest options available for the TCX.

First are the new longer POM solid axle cup joints. Due to longer length they allow the use of the 44 mm drive shafts, thus providing a wider range of choices.

For practice I have combined the DCJ (Double Cardan Joint) drive shaft with the long steel solid axle cup joint. I have already tried the POM cups I mention above and have not seen any wear at all after a few runs, so I'll save them for the next race meeting. In theory they should give just a little smoother action and maybe more turn-in compared to the steel axle cups.

Next new part is the new front steering block (upright or spindle) which now features three holes for the steering link. I understand that this should provide a bit more consistant feel. I did not get the chance to test it back to back with the old style, two hole steering block, so I cannot comment.

A close up of the 24k gold plated Qteq Banana connectors soldered to the Team Orion R10Pro speed control wires.

A shot of the chassis (sans shock absorbers) ready for the next race meeting.