2008 World Championship Charlotte
NC(USA)
1/8th Off-Road |
| Report by: RB
Products |
| Event date : |
15-21/09/2008 |
| Racers present : |
216 |
| Weather : |
Monday : Warm with high
humidity
Tuesday :
Rain
Wednesday : Dry no
sun
Thursday : Dry and
Sunny
Friday : Dry and
Sunny
Saturday : Dry and
Sunny
Sunday : Sun with
some clouds |
| |
|
| |
| On
this page we will try to give you some insight on the things we encounter
during our stay at these World Championship race held this time in Charlotte
NC(USA) at the FARM-II , a huge and nice facility as we are used to in the
USA. |
 |
|
| Monday
Practise 1 |
 |
| Lineup for
technical inspection, due to the large number of drivers this was a huge
task. |
 |
| RB is
present to support their team drivers and also final customers. |
|
 |
| Lance
Norick(right) and a part of his team have been doing a great job to get this
event going. |
 |
| Some
anxious moments before the start of the first qualifying session. |
|
|
| Tuesday
Practise 2 & 3 and
Openings Ceremony |
| |
 |
| Tuesday
morning started with a little bit of rain but quickly became like a flooding of
everything. Some racers went out but soon a thunderstorm came up and the race
had to be delayed. |
|
 |
| In some of
the tents we have a real river going through. |
 |
| LiveRC.com is also present to
cover this world event on the Internet, Brandon Rohde the owner came with 8
persons to make this happen. |
 |
| An iside
look of LiveRC, as you can see Brandon is making a serious effort to promote
this hobby. |
 |
| In the USA
you find all kinds of collectioners... |
|
 |
| Some
drivers took their chance to go out in these conditions and see the results, at
lease 3 hours of cleaning ahead. |
 |
| Some just
cleaned their engines like this, I wonder why after the engine is not working
so well any more... |
 |
| To kill the
time while waiting for the weather to clear up some try to eliminate the
competition by duct-taping him to a pole, this happened to our team driver Vik
Taylor, but he got himself loose... |
|
| |
| Wednesday Qualification 1-2. |
Today the
real qualifying started, in the first heats it was almost impossible to finish,
the track conditions were so bad that it was not an advantage at all but the
drivers tried anyway. The choice for what RB engines to use was various.
Most of the drivers opted for the RB C6BBII but also some others opted
for the RB CONCEPT WS7, both engines were used with the 2045 tuned
pipe and the 198 manifold.
Today Guillaume VRAY was our
fastest team-driver with his Mugen/RB Concept C6BBII placing himself in
the 5th position in the firts qualifier but unfortunately he had a mechanical
problem with his car in the second qualifier wich made him drop back in the
overall standings.
But tomorrow there will be
another day. |
|
 |
| A Giant
screen for the visitors to follow the racing!, also the announcers during this
event are doing a great job commenting all that is happening on the track and
during the event. |
|
 |
| Race
conditions during the first heats were almost impossible. |
 |
| Mathias
Reckward(D) with Daniel's car after the race. |
 |
| Big line-up
for the washing of the cars after the qualifiers. |
 |
| Linus
Thern(S) his car after the race. As you an see the race conditons are
improving. |
 |
| In the
afternoon the track conditions were improving. |
|
 |
| Mathias
Reckward(D) with Daniel's car before the race. |
 |
| Jerome
Sartel(F) his chassis when he removed the essential parts. |
 |
| Hakan
Thern(S) with Linus his car before the race. |
 |
| Since the
line-up for the cleaning of the car was so long Hakan decided to do it at the
Hotel...:-). |
|
| |
| Thursday
Qualification
3-4. |
| |
Today the weather was certainly
better then yesterday allowing most of the dirvers to improve their results
with more or less luck. Most of the official team RB Concept did have the
advantage of a good and reliable engine power but could not always get the
result he wanted unfortunately not always related to the
engine.
Also with the
actual point system in the qualifiers we cannot really determine the position
of each racer since 4 out of 6 heats will count, so we will have to wait untill
all qualifiers are finished to find the final rankings. |
| |
 |
| Today the
weather was looking good, after all this water and mud this is a good
thing. |
 |
| Richi Gomez
with his C6-BBII accheived some very good runs today. |
|
 |
| Refueling
action of Christoffer Svennson(S) he has chosen for this race the C6-BBII in
combination with the 192 manifold and 2045 pipe. |
|
| |
| Friday
Qualification
5-6 |
| |
In this last day of qualifying quite
some of the RB team drivers improved while others failed.
The RB Concept engines have run
without any problems and showing their usual relaiability, speed and good
fuelconsumption , there is nothing we can do other then to accept the not to
our level qualifying results of our team drivers which were not related to the
engines. |
| |
 |
| The team
from Mexico, most of them are using RB Concept engines with good
succes. |
 |
| The crowd
started to show up today, I think we will have a lot of people around on
sunday. |
|
 |
| LiveRC had
to increase the bandwidth to serve better all the people who are connecting to
their website. Wow things are getting really professional here. |
 |
| The
mechanic of Guillaume VRAY(F), Guillaume was really unlucky in the last run
where he had an incident in the pitlane costing him his best run of the
week. |
|
| |
|
 |
| The Welcome ceremony had been delayed due to the bad weather on
monday, so now here we are... |
|
| Top 16 after 6 rounds of qualifying counting 4 results out of
6 |
1- Mike
Truhe (USA)
2- Cavalieri (USA)
3- Wheeler (USA)
4- Mainfield (USA)
5- Amezcua (USA)
6- Aigoin (FRA)
7- Savoya (FRA)
8- Tebo (USA)
9- Pavidis (USA)
10- Gosch (USA)
11- Saxton (USA)
12- Lutz
(USA)
13- James (USA)
14- Hara (JAP)
15- Kortz (USA)
16-
Quagraine (FIN) |
| Position of the RB team drivers |
28- J.
SARTEL(F) RB Concept C6BBII
34- R. GOMEZ(SP) RB Concept C6BBII
38- T.
VIK(USA) RB Concept C6BBII
39- L. THERN(S) RB Concept C6BBII
43- G.
VRAY (F) RB Concept C6BBII
47- G. ALSOP (GB) RB Concept C6BBII
50- N.
CRAGG (GB) RB Concept C6BBII
58- C. SVENSSON (S) RB Concept C6BBII
66- B.
EASTON (USA) RB Concept C6BBII
68- T. BREMICKER (D) RB Concept C6BBII
72-
D. RECKWARD (D) RB Concept C6BBII
76- D. CROMPTON (GB) RB Concept
C6BBII
|
|
| |
| Saturday
Finals 1/2048 till
1/16 |
| |
 |
| One of the starts of the subfinals, it will be a long day to go
through all the subfinals, remember we have 216 racers in this Worlds
Event. |
|
| |
1/32 Even final
Here we find together Billy
Easton(USA), Tim Bremicker(D), Daniel Reckward(D) and David
Crompton(GB)
After a
good start for Billy somebody crashed into his car after the triple jump and he
found himself last, then he was working his way up again and his radio started
glitching and eventually he had some runaways, this made it impossible for him
to bump-up into the next final. Tim had a reasonable start but he made too many
mistakes when he was into the traffic and also for him it was impossible to
bump-up to the next level. Daniel and David had a very close race together
around the 2nd, 3rd and 4th place, this tossed around until the last lap where
on the last 3 turns Daniel was in 3rd place and David 4th, Daniels transmission
was giving way and his car started to slow down, David had to avoid him but
tangled with another driver and so he lost his 4th place in the last turn
before the finish, So only Daniel managed to bump-up into the next
final.
1/16
Even final
Here
we find together Niel Cragg(GB), Christoffer Svensson(S) and Daniel
Reckward(D)
Niel had
a very good start and all seemed to be going smooth until after 2 laps he made
a mistake and so found himself in the middle of the field again. he tried to
work his way up back again but started to make too many mistakes and due to
this he was unable to bump-up. Christoffer had a reasonable start and turned in
some very fast laptimes but made also too many mistakes, so also for him the
adventure ended here. Daniel had a hard time moving his way through the field
but his experience helped him to move into 4th spot and so he managed to
bump-up until the next final.
|
| |
| Sunday
Finals 1/8 till l
Final |
| |
 |
| Lots of
spectators |
 |
| Daniel
Reckward and Tyler Vik ready for the start. |
|
 |
| Just before
the start of the subfinals we already had a large crowd. |
 |
| The trophy
girls... |
|
| |
1/8 UnEven final
Here we find together Linus Thern(S),
Graham ALSOP(GB) and Guillaume VRAY(F).
Linus had a very bad start from the
very beginning and found himself at the rear of the pack, unable to fight his
way back up due to driving errors. Graham planned a 10 minutes fuel stop
strategy and had a very good pace at the first part of the race and was even
leading, then in the middle of the race he made some errors which has cost him
a lot and he found himself battling for the 4th place which unfortunately he
did not manage to obtain. Guillaume managed to bump-up to the next
final.
1/8 Even
final
Here we
find together Daniel Reckward(D), Tyler VIK(USA), Richi
Gomez(SP)
Daniel had
a good start but at the 5 minute mark he was given a stop and go, there was
some confusion due to this and the stop and go was also used to refuel, however
due to this the other fuelstops had to be stretched, with the result that with
the 3rd fuelstop the engine just stalled when refueling, with a quick restart
we did not loose a lot of time unfortunately he lost a screw in his steering
block and so was unable to bump-up. Richi found himself in the middle of the
field after the start but made some mistakes which made it impossible for him
to bump-up. Tyler had a good race from start to finish and managed to bump-up
with ease.
1/4
UnEven final
Here
we find only Guillaume VRAY(F).
At the start of the race his mechanic
accidentally stopped the engine when refueling, this was not really a problem
since he could start out of the pits and so he did not loose too much time,
however this incident destabilized a little Guillaume and also his previous
race was quite difficult so he made some mistakes which you are not allowed to
make at this level of racing, so for him the race also ended
here.
1/4 Even
final
Here we
find together Jerome Sartel(F) and Tyler VIK(USA)
Tyler did not have a very good start
and made some mistakes but was able to work his way up again, unfortunately his
rear transmission failed at le last 5 minutes of the race so this was also the
end of his possibility to bump up. Jerome had a good start and managed his race
without too much problems and managed to bump-up to the next
final.
1/2
Even final
Here
we find Jerome Sartel(F)
After a good start Jerome found himself in the middle of the field
where it was more then difficult to maintain your position, he was involved in
some incidents in the beginning of the race and lost a little his rhythm, at
the 25 minute mark has car stopped at the far right end of the track and at
first we thought it was a flameout but after checking the car the engine had
moved away from the spur gear and so the hopes for him to bump-up into the
final were gone. |
| |
 |
| The start of the final! |
 |
| Mike Truhe(USA) - Atsushi Hara(JAP) - Renaud Savoya(F) |
|
| |
| |
|
| |
| Epilog |
Congratulations to Atsushi Hara with
his HotBodies/OS/ProLine winning combination, it was a very exiting final with
a deserved win at the end.
Of course we are disappointed since we have not managed to get one or
more of our engines in the final but this does not take away that we have done
all we could to get there. We did not encounter major technical problems nor
failures with our engines, fuel consumption was more then good and reliability
was there, so what could we do more...
Anyway we will continue our
development and want to thank all the racers who have used our engines for this
event.
Hope to see
you all next time. |
Events
