Race report by Helge Johannessen

The first round of the Norwegian National Championship was held in Farsun on April 4th. New this year is that 5 races will count in the National Championship instead of only 1 race.

This would be the first race on asphalt with the T2’008 and after the great functionality on carpet I was exited about how this car would work on asphalt. Since the nitro class was held on Saturday, the grip was much better than last year, although tire wear was a problem. The biggest challenge on this track was to get enough steering into the corners, but my car felt great from the first test, so only small adjustments were made.

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The 2008 European Championship 1/10 Nitro Touring Car “B” was held at the beautiful Ampuis track in France. The track is 306m long with quite a long straight and lot of small corners on the left side. The asphalt provided very good grip. Drivers from around Europe gathered together for the first week of May to battle for the prestigious European title and of course all the major brands were represented in the pits.

Qualification results after the semi-finals:
1. Derderian Michael - France
2. Spiniello Mario - Italy
3. Eytard Thomas - XRAY NT1 - France
4. Barbera Guido - XRAY NT1 - Italy
5 .Wischnewski Dirk - XRAY NT1 - Germany
6. Günsel Thomas - XRAY NT1 - Germany
7. Giacalone Dino - Italy
8. Pelaez Victor - XRAY NT1 - Spain
9. Bougnoteau Nicolas - France
10. Defie Joffrey - France

2008 European Championship “B” final results:
1 .Wischnewski Dirk - XRAY NT1 - Germany
2. Bougnoteau Nicolas - France
3. Günsel Thomas - XRAY NT1 - Germany
4. Pelaez Victor - XRAY NT1 - Spain
5. Derderian Michael - France
6. Barbera Guido - XRAY NT1 - Italy
7. Giacalone Dino - Italy
8. Spiniello Mario - Italy
9. Defie Joffrey - France
10. Eytard Thomas - XRAY NT1 - France

Source : XRAY

Indonesia National 2nd series was held this time at Bukit Sentul RC Camp owned by Teddy Syach, former 2004 Brazil 200mm GP IFMAR finalist. The track is located in a mountaineous area at West Java, approximately 50 minutes drive by car from Jakarta. The weather during the race was hot and dry.

FINAL RESULT :
1. Teddy Syach
2. Suwardi Suliandy XRAY T2′008
3. Didi Kartanegara XRAY T2′008
4. Dani XRAY T2′008
5. Toto Kastawinata XRAY T2′008
6. Dody XRAY T2′008
7. Robert
8. Galih XRAY T2′007
9. Ronald
10. Chester XRAY T2′007

Source : XRAY

The first Swiss national round of six races (altogether) was held in Oberbüren in eastern Switzerland on the weekend of April 26-28. There were 36 Expert drivers and about 70 drivers in the Amateur (Hobby) class. For Swiss Team XRAY this would be the roll-out and first race for the new XB808 buggy. There were already six XB808s in the lineup and still a lot of XB8ECs. The weather was great throughout the weekend.

Expert Final:
1. Philippe Lachat
2. Didier Perrin
3. Robin Frischkopf XRAY XB808
4. Patrick Hess
5. Christophe Plancherel
6. Christoph Affolter
7. Dominik Tschanz
8. Michael Kallen
9. Patrick Hofer
10. Marc Heim XRAY
11. Gregory Jakob
12. Jeremy Pittet

Amateur Final:
1. Gerd Pfeifer
2. Ronny Lüber
3. Roger Frei XRAY
4. Sebastien Couanoud
5. Etienne Kaser XRAY
6. Loic Pittet
7. Stefan Wüthrich
8. Yves Schmidlin
9. Hansi Rütsche
10. Roman Bergamin
11. Markus Goth XRAY
12. Renaud Ott

Source : XRAY

The Novarossi & Mugen Championship was held at DongHae Raceway in Korea. Since the Korea Nitro Off-road Buggy Championship would be held at the same track in 3 weeks, the race was called the ‘Pre-Korea National Championship’. And of course most of the Korean top drivers participated in this race.

The race was represented by Team XRAY drivers ChoongYeul, DongKwan, NamHo, and DongWoo. It was the first official race for Team XRAY Korea where they would be able to test and race with the new XB808. As expected, the race was able to showcase the XB808’s great performance as it was very fast, reliable, and performed great jumps. However, being the first XB808 testing by the Korean drivers, they had a problem with timing the jumps as the XB808 was much faster and jumps longer than any other buggy they had ever experienced. During the first qualifier, it was kind hard to determine how far it would jump. However, we quickly became familiar with the performance of the XB808 in the 2nd qualifier.

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The first STM race was held from Friday April 18, 2008 until Sunday April 20, 2008 at my home track of RMC - Wien in the 22nd district. In the Modified class 28 drivers were registered and in the standard class 21 drivers fought for the victory.

Qualify Result :
1. Mario Sowka – XRAY T2’008
2. Hupo Hönigl
3. Thomas Pumpler
4. Patrick Gollner
5. Jakob Zündl

Final results for Expert - Modified:
1. Mario Sowka – XRAY T2’008
2. Thomas Pumpler
3. Hupo Hönigl
4. Markus Eder
5. Patrick Gollner

Source : XRAY

The fourth round of the German Championship took place in Nürnberg Germany on April 26th and 27th 2008. The XRAY Team drivers in attendance were Dirk Wischnewski, Thomas Günsel and Michael Heinrich, supported by Bertram Kessler.

Results:
1. Thomas Günsel XRAY NT1
2. Michael Heinrich XRAY NT1
3. Christoph Pietsch
4. Eder Sebastian XRAY NT1
5. Thalheimer Mirco
6. Drachsler Ralf
7. Kanabe Nobuhiro
8. Stammler Dirk
9. Ring Florian XRAY NT1
10. Dirk Wischnewski XRAY NT1

Source : XRAY

Race report by Jason Branham

This past weekend Rd. 2 of the Texas Nitro Invitational Series was held in Victoria, TX. This is the only race held at this track during the year so it’s always a special place for us Texans to come and race due to the fast, high-bite, blue groove surface in which we do not see at any of our many race tracks in Texas. Victoria Raceway always brings close fast competitive racing and this year was no exception.

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Race report by Frank Andersen

The first 10th scale race of the season was arranged at the Farsund track on April 19, 2008. Farsund is located some 450 kilometers south of Oslo and about as far south as you can get in Norway. Most people arrived on Thursday evening or Friday morning and thus had all of Friday to practice at the track and find a good setup for the race on Saturday. After a week of pretty cold weather we had two sunny days with around 10 degrees Celsius temperatures and not so warm conditions.

The track itself is 210 meters long with a nice layout. It is pretty easy to learn but hard to master as you have to drive smooth and not charge too much into the corners in order to be fast. Being the first race of the season and also considering the low temperature we had to spray the track with fuel to get some grip. This helped, but the tire wear was pretty high.

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Team XRAY Korea driver TaeWan Kim dominated from the beginning to the end of the race and continues his string of wins for Team XRAY in the Banwal Championship. This is the longest historical off-road racing championship in Korea.

XRAY was the main sponsor for the race event and were well represented by XRAY Team drivers TaeWan, DongKwanand ChoongYeul. Since most of the team drivers did not have much time to race with the new 808, only ChoongYeul used the new car in this race and other racers were astonished at the impressive performance of the new car. However, ChoongYeul did not much have luck during the race as he had several engine flame-outs.

The Buggy A main final was a really tight race between TaeWan and JungSuk. However, TaeWan was able to win the race with smart, but aggressive, driving.

Results:
1. TaeWan Kim XRAY XB8EC
2. JungSuk Oh
3. SiYeun Jang

Source : XRAY