03.01.2014

Report by Donald Stark (VRC race reporter)

The Track
This year the race will be held at the site of the 2013 2wd and 4wd Buggy World Championship track in Chico California. The track is a sugar coated clay base with mad grip. The release date was set for the day the event would start. As it drew closer to that day the anticipation mounted. Drivers began to grumble about the late release and VRC ended up releasing the track a week early leaving plenty of time for set up and practice. This was a great decision based on the difficulty level of the track. Traction was good, on a scale from one to ten I would rate it a 7. The 14 turns and 10 jumps left drivers scratching their heads in wonder. It was apparent that turning faster lap times would require a perfect setup, jet fighter reflexes, patience’s of a saint and a little bit of luck. The fast line seemed to lead to an off camber jump out of every turn and this gave the short course trucks problems. Seemingly simple triples became the game changer and the all or nothing style combo jump on the back before the start finish line turned out to be the difference for the win.

Fast Times or Shortcuts
VRC is marketed to the masses with a free to play business model that allows everyone to try the basic product at no cost. For world championship month the each stop opens up for free to play on the world championship tracks. Whenever there is a race there is always going to be that one guy who wants to get ahead without doing the practice necessary to run the fast lap times. In the real world it happens at every big race, there is a cut that goes unnoticed; the pass is more aggressive than needs be. Whatever the case may be it happens. In E-Racing there is way more opportunity for the dishonest person to cheat. Hackers can change game files, back in the day of motocross madness there was a way to hack the power curves and make your motorcycle faster. At this event the track has a pit lane that can be cut when doing so the cheater takes out two jumps and three turns that can save 3-5 seconds per lap.

The Class System
VRC offers a class system for the Short Course World Championship, what this means is that at the end of the race there will be three World Champions. The three classes are club, sport and pro. The club class is the entry level or default class that drivers start out at when they join VRC. There is an option to select your racer level based on your real life racing experience. As with anything there is a learning curve to VRC it takes some months to figure out that there is an entire community in the message boards so when a racer is a pro caliber driver running in the club class it is not necessarily cheating, most of the time it simply an oversight.
Club class is meant to be a starting point for beginners, Sport class is for the average racer that can go fast on any given day and the pro class is for those top caliber racers that want to compete against the best every time.

RACING ACTION



Pro Class A-Main
At the horn the drivers launched off the line, Rob Gillespie was cautious off the first jump while Nicolas Loriot cleared the table double combo. Loriot took a chance and scored the hole shot followed by Barnabas Toth, Rob Gillespie, David Joor and Richard Malmlof. First second and third place were running close the whole race each turn the lead changed. Loriot was the gambling young gun taking his chance with the make it or break it jump combo on each lap, this enabled him to cross the line first for the first 6 laps. As with any gamble eventually the risk catches up with you and it did for young Nicolas. He began making mistakes first the landing and turning too soon then clipping the pipe while trying to set up for the jump and finally rolling off the track in a violent roll over after a muffed landing. Banrnabas the on road specialist has made major strides in off road lately and his driving style fit this track like a glove. He was next in line and ready to run when Nicolas dropped off the pace. Rob Gillespie was lurking in the shadows stalking Mr. Toth. The two were running equally fast lap times averaging 32 seconds per loop, on lap ten Rob laid down the lap of the race and took the lead at the stripe. Nicolas and Martin Wollanka had made it back up to the front to make it a four car battle for the lead. One by one they began making mistakes, first Martin clipped a pipe, Nicolas had a spectacular rollover and Barnabas blew the last lap running a 34 second lap. All in all this was a fantastic battle the lasted for the duration of the even starting December 18th and concluding December 29th.



PRO CLASS WORLD CHAMPION
1. Rob Gillespie
2. Barnabás Tóth
3. Martin Wollanka
4. Nicolas Loriot
5. David Joor
6. Marcin Malin'ski
7. Edouard Hugon
8. Eben Coetzee
9. Richard Malmlöf
10. Kirby Backemeyer

Pro A-Main final video will be released soon! With commentary by Mike Garrison of LiveRC.

Sport Class A-Main
The sport class offers some great racing action between Sebastian Winterstein, Kevin Hart and Kjetil Garpestad. Sebastian took the lead off the start and led across the line at the end of lap one. Half way through lap two Kevin took the lead and he crossed the line first. The two would swap back and forth to the end but Sebastian got the best of the exchange and took the win!



SPORT CLASS WORLD CHAMPION
1. Sebastian Winterstein
2. Kevin Hart
3. Kjetil Garpestad
4. Robert Sorjonen
5. Mateusz Betko
6. Randy Angelito
7. André Welker
8. Roy Salminen
9. Robert Hillman
10. Matt Wallin



CLUB CLASS WORLD CHAMPION
1. Chris Schellein
2. Fabrizio Teghesi
3. Taruma Tribudiman
4. Riccardo Perin
5. Shinnosuke Tokuda
6. Ivan Taylor
7. Bernhard Steinhauser
8. Ulf Stenvall
9. Jarred King
10. Magnus Frandsen

Comments

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Pages: 1 | 2 (Total posts: 14)

Donald S Race reporter	04.01.2014 [17:38] Posted by: Nicolas Loriot (FR) on 4.1.2014 17:21:31 (UTC) Posted by: Donald Stark (US) on 4.1.2014 13:34:34 (UTC) WOW The Video is awesome, Love the slow motion replay of the before the last lap. Yeah the Video is awesome, but the last slow motion :/#~~`^ You were the star of that replay Nicolas, Great race Young Nicolas. You will be hard to beat this year....
Nicolas L. Multiple VRC World Champion	04.01.2014 [17:21] Posted by: Donald Stark (US) on 4.1.2014 13:34:34 (UTC) WOW The Video is awesome, Love the slow motion replay of the before the last lap. Yeah the Video is awesome, but the last slow motion :/#~~`^
Donald S Race reporter	04.01.2014 [13:34] WOW The Video is awesome, Love the slow motion replay of the before the last lap.
Hermann R Moderator	04.01.2014 [13:16] Posted by: Pieter Bervoets (NL) on 4.1.2014 12:12:38 (UTC) Posted by: Robert Hillman (SE) on 4.1.2014 0:22:31 (UTC) I thought that cheaters would be DQ. Perhaps no one have reported them. I think you should take a closer look at Taruma Tribudiman in the Club A-main and Matt Wallin in the Sport A-main. Otherwise a great event and a nice report. Thanks. I am still catching up with all the VRC Worlds events. I haven't gotten to watch all finals yet. In stead, we are working on a voting system. Racers from the same race and racer level can vote for a DQ for a certain result, if a result gets 3 or 5 such votes the result will become DQ and will not count. The DQ-ed racer can file a protest which will then be decided by our moderators who can check the replays, lap times etc. I think if we have such a system in place that cheating will not happen anymore or at least very rarely. With the pit lane as it was cheating was very tempting, in real live racing that would never happen because eveyone is watching. With the replays racers will realize that also here everyone is watching... great thing
Hermann R Moderator	04.01.2014 [13:14] Class report and the pictures great!
Pieter B Founder	04.01.2014 [12:19] Posted by: Donald Stark (US) on 4.1.2014 4:18:26 (UTC) I spent a little time making these world Champion Pictures http://www.vrcworld.com/getimage.ashx?xid=309767 http://www.vrcworld.com/getimage.ashx?xid=309763 http://www.vrcworld.com/getimage.ashx?xid=309760 I know its not much but it took me longer to make the pictures than it did to write the article. Edited by author: 4.1.2014 4:28:47 GMT I had put them in but somehow they didn't show up, that was fixed later. Thanks for an excellent coverage Don! And images should be 585 px wide pls. next time.... Edited by author: 4.1.2014 12:22:23 GMT
Pieter B Founder	04.01.2014 [12:12] Posted by: Robert Hillman (SE) on 4.1.2014 0:22:31 (UTC) I thought that cheaters would be DQ. Perhaps no one have reported them. I think you should take a closer look at Taruma Tribudiman in the Club A-main and Matt Wallin in the Sport A-main. Otherwise a great event and a nice report. Thanks. I am still catching up with all the VRC Worlds events. I haven't gotten to watch all finals yet. In stead, we are working on a voting system. Racers from the same race and racer level can vote for a DQ for a certain result, if a result gets 3 or 5 such votes the result will become DQ and will not count. The DQ-ed racer can file a protest which will then be decided by our moderators who can check the replays, lap times etc. I think if we have such a system in place that cheating will not happen anymore or at least very rarely. With the pit lane as it was cheating was very tempting, in real live racing that would never happen because eveyone is watching. With the replays racers will realize that also here everyone is watching...
Donald S Race reporter	04.01.2014 [04:18] I spent a little time making these world Champion Pictures http://www.vrcworld.com/getimage.ashx?xid=309767 http://www.vrcworld.com/getimage.ashx?xid=309763 http://www.vrcworld.com/getimage.ashx?xid=309760 I know its not much but it took me longer to make the pictures than it did to write the article. Edited by author: 4.1.2014 4:28:47 GMT
Robert Hillman	04.01.2014 [00:22] I thought that cheaters would be DQ. Perhaps no one have reported them. I think you should take a closer look at Taruma Tribudiman in the Club A-main and Matt Wallin in the Sport A-main. Otherwise a great event and a nice report. Thanks.
Sebastian W	03.01.2014 [23:45] Cool report!!:)