Picasaweb Gallery

While I'm working on my Part 2 race report, you may find all the photos I've ever posted, and a few more (771), on my picasa web public gallery at the following link:

https://plus.google.com/photos/107121016195669935924/albums/5675145056112068689?banner=pwa&authkey=CJH96fqq3e7vcQ

2013 National Championship Round 2 - Part 1

A few weeks ago, on the last weekend of May 2013, we had our 2^nd round of the National Championship in EP Touring cars.
The race was held at a track outside Athens, about 3 hours’ drive from home.
This is a lovely race track, with an incredible rhythm, constantly moving very fast, and requiring perfect precision. It is fast, hot, bumpy and very punishing if you get it wrong. It is worth mentioning that the facilities of the track are incredible.

From the year before we knew well that local driver, Michalis, was the favorite and that proved to be the case once more from the practice times of Saturday. The change of chassis from XRAY to YOKOMO for the 2013 season did not dent his pace, even more so he looked faster and more composed than ever.

Current National champion, Nick, was also right on the pace with what looked to me an absolutely perfect car. Nick had the privilege to be recently schooled by no other than TEAM XRAY lead driver Alexander Hagberg and he proved that he learns fast and can apply his knowledge into action. I was massively impressed by his car and driving and the lap times proved the point.

On the other hand, just as I thought that on the first race I had my worse race ever, Saturday proved that things can get even worse. After completing an installation run and having run my 2^nd pack to start pushing a bit more, I entered the track for my 3^rd run to check consistency, electronics and tyre wear. The run started pretty well when half way through, while being at full speed on the front straight, a heard familiar sound of a ripped tyre. Before I could blink, the car turned 180, got air under the body and was airborne at full speed. Lucky me, there was no landing on the grass or at least on the wooden wall. No. The car chose to hit a solid steel pole with a concrete base. The sound of impact was extremely eerie and painful. My friend who picked up the car, was holding like a road kill with its guts hanging out. Anything you can think of was damaged. Speedo, motor, servo, receiver, lipo pack, cooling fans, all ripped right off the chassis, broken, stripped and bent.
The carbon chassis plate had a big cut on its side, the top deck was broken, the main shaft bent like a banana, 2 susp. Arms broken, upper links  broken, ball cups ripped off, anything you name it was damaged in one way or another. The body too had a massive rip on its side.
I was really stunned with the amount of damage occurred. I’ve seen damaged cars before but that was a first.

I should have taken pictures but unfortunately I forgot to do so.

I took a big breath and remained calm. I immediately started recording the damaged parts and I was lining up on my work bench the new spare parts. It took me 4 hours to disassemble the damaged car and salvage anything that could be used and then assemble the new car. My main concern was that I did not have a spare main chassis so I had to built on the damaged one.
By the time I finished it was 8 o’clock in the evening and I decided to make a test run just to see if it worked. Visibility was limited as the sun had set and the risk for an accident was too high so I just did 5 laps and called it a day. The car wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t as accurate as before but at least it rolled and went straight.

Soon my report from the race..

Working on something new..

Haven't had the chance to report on my second Nats race, but I will do so shortly. In the meantime I am working on a new kit with some modified parts

IFMAR 1/8 track Pre-Worlds 2013 (update 2)

The warm up race for the IFMAR World Championships in October 2013 is over and the winner is Shimo with his newly signed Mrx-5 WC Spec. This is not a real surprise as Kei-Tune Raceway is a track which Shimo knows very well and has had many victories in the past.
It is however interesting to see him adapt quickly to his new car.
Below are a set of photos from the race.

Winner and his beautiful O.S. Speed powered MRX-5 WC Spec.

Some other photos 

Masami on duty as referee. The fact that he did not compete does not cancel the speculation that he will compete in the Worlds in October 2013. The same goes for Atsushi Hara and his team.

And now some video action:

Race start procedure:

Focus on winner Shimo. Just incredibly smooth, quick and consistent.

Source: Facebook (Adriano Berton)
           : Youtube (Kurashige42)

IFMAR 1/8 track Pre-Worlds 2013 (update 1)

Quite interesting to see these two active at the track.. is HB into something?

On another note some more pics from today's action:

Adrien Bertin's car: (note that now the KM car features a wire front rollbar as per the the current norm)

Meen with his car:

Fukuda's KM Racing car features wheel hub carbon discs similar to those of the MRX-5 and Viper 977:

Current World Champion, Robert and his mechanic Felix in the pits:

Source: Facebook (KM)

IFMAR 1/8 track Pre-Worlds 2013

This coming weekend the pre-Worlds for the 2013 IFMAR World Championships take place in Japan at the track called Kei-Tune, near Tokyo.
The information is pretty limited but some Japanese blogs do post a few interesting photos and videos











Robert Pietch at work:

Fukuda and his KM-Racing car

Shimo and his Mugen MRX-5 car

Adrien Bertin (1999 World Champion) back racing 1/8 with KM Racing

erpent Viper 977.

Some other racers:

Shimo's MRX-5 and Fukuda's KM Racing:




Yuya Sahashi's Serpent 977 Viper: 




Source:
1. JMRCA
2. Keitune Track
3. Airknack Racing blog
4. Facebook (Siribodhi / Takeshita)

Japanese Blog on painting

I randomly came across a Japanese blog dedicated in paintjobs on both lexan bodies and static models.
I think his work is impressive

Art Factory Tomokyo

some of my favorite: