08.01.2015
presented by TEKIN
Kevin Pignotti has added a second Worlds win in the 2014 VRC Worlds series, this time in 1:10 ISTC electric touring cars Open Class at Collegno Italy. The 18 year old multiple VRC World champion had to battle it out with his main rival Martin Wollanka from Austria who finished 5 seconds down on Kevin in 2nd, and Brandon McBain from Australia who completed the podium in 3rd 9.5 seconds behind the winner.
Drama for Toth
But it was a much closer call for Pignotti than the results show. The A-Main final was a 15 minute race which would mean at least 1 battery change somewhere in the middle of the race. But 2 finalists had opted to go the full distance on just one 7200mAh LiPo pack, Barnebas Toth and Dana Bailes. Toth was still using a 4.5T motor but must have adjusted the speed controller in such a way that he would be able to make the 15 minutes, costing him about 3/10 of a second on average, but that would about work out on a 52 lap race. Bailes had opted for the 5.5T motor, sacrificing even more speed to make it to the end on one charge.
Both Pignotti and Wollanka ran away as expected, but by the time they had changed batteries they found themselves at the back of the field with Toth at p1 and Bailes at p3. With just 1 minute on the clock Pignotti had closed the gap with Toth till under a second but then made a very rare mistake, in fact his only one, to lose 1 ½ second on Toth who then looked safe to make it to the finish line to become the new VRC World champion. But with 20 seconds on the clock Toth was starting to lose some speed and in the very last lap Pignotti managed to catch Toth to prolong his VRC Worlds title in this class. Toth’s car died with just 50m to go till the finish line, and both Wollanka and McBain passed the unfortunate Hungarian racer. While all the others had already finished Toth changed batteries and completed his 52nd lap a minute later to settle for 4th. Bailes finished 5th 1.5 seconds short of a 52 lapper.
It was a gamble and it almost paid off for Barnebas. The triple length A-Main Open Class final proved to be an interesting and exciting change for this racing class.
Kevin Pignotti proved again to be a world class racers. The race stats of the Italian Team Associated driver show his exceptional talent. With a race average of 16.878 (including a slowest lap of 18.352!), his race average was just 0.194 off his fastest lap of 16.682! Congratulations once more to Kevin. When will we see more of this very talented Team Associated racer in the real world…
2014 VRC WORLDS 1:10 ISTC OPEN CLASS
1. Kevin Pignotti Italy 52 15:05.574
2. Martin Wollanka Austria 52 15:10.770
3. Brendon McBain Australia 52 15:15.142
4. Barnabás Tóth Hungary 52 16:05.320
5. Dana Bailes USA 51 15:01.130
6. Chris Stack Australia 50 15:06.308
7. Jorge Diaz Spain 50 15:08.264
8. Javi Ferrando Spain 50 15:09.834
9. Kévin Rasquin France 50 15:13.938
10. Robby Engelen Belgium 50 15:16.372
NATIONS RANKING
2 A-main finalist were enough to give Australia 1st place in the Nations ranking. USA and Germany had to settle for 2nd and 3rd. Even with Pignotti’s victory Italy was not able to make an impression on the Nations and neither did the UK, another European stronghold in this class.
1. Australia 419 B. McBain (3.), C. Stack (6.), S. Young (44.), L. Allam (47.), A. Rice (79.)
2. USA 410 D. Bailes (5.), B. Caley (12.), N. Cummings (35.), B. Seay (41.), J. Losaw (49.)
3. Germany 391 R. Vey (15.), N. Rosenhahn (22.), M. Schreuer (23.), S. Rosenhahn (31.), A. Rönick (33.)
Comments
Only active members can post comments
(Total posts: 3)
