TAMIYA ASIA CUP QUALIFYING SERIES ROUND 2 (MALAYSIA)
Date: April 30, 2006.
Venue: Atria Shopping Centre
Classes: Buggy, Stock Touring, GT Touring, M-chassis demonstation
Organisers: Tamiya Underground and Nam Lee Hobby
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A quick breakfast with the wife and my in-laws before the race. They were visiting from Perak, and were stuck with us at Atria for the whole afternoon. |
| Uthaya's buggy (blue) and mine. Uthaya got his from Leonard Ong, who opted out of the buggy class to focus on the GT, Stock and M-Chassis classes. |
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Me and Chee Yong. These hand-out motors are for the Stock class. |
| Met another Azman this race, who is seen here preparing this M-chassis car. The M-chassis is very popular this year but only five people showed up to race, so the class was reduced to a demo race. For some of the heats, most of the drivers were busy working on the GT and Stock cars, so only two cars were on the track. Azman here had some trouble with his servo saver, so this car was mostly out of the race. |
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The crowd at Atria was ... well, "crowd" is the wrong word for it, really. |
| Despite the narrow space, the organisers found a way to lay out quite a fast track but it involved splitting the driver's stand in two. We were blocking one another's views quite a bit, so the crashes were many and quite spectacular. Some drivers actually stood away from the stand to get a clearer view. |
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The pit area was upstairs on the first and second floors. At first, I was a little worried about losing stuff because I was sharing a pit table with two other buggy racers (Ng and Uthaya) and we would all be downstairs during the buggy heats. On further reflection, we really didn't much to lose apart from a tangled web of chargers and battery packs. |
| After each race, we were in a frantic rush to do the following - get the transponders off our cars, hand them to back, run upstairs (2 floors for some participants), drop our cars off, and run back down to do our marshalling duties (and maybe sneak in a battery discharging/charging if you were brave). I had a good work out and some stiff legs after the race. |
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Nam Lee Hobby, the RC shop in Atria Shopping Centre. |
| Nam Lee's big boss Thomas Tan was out with chicken pox the whole week, so his wife Joyce was looking after things at the shop. She didn't want to be photographed. |
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Hafiz, who ended up disappointingly in B-main in Round One of the TAC qualifiers was very fast in the GT class this time around. Everyone else was driving Tamiya's latest TA-05 but Hafiz drove his TB-02R consistently fast to get into the A-main and then drove flawlessly in the 2nd final to finish top of the podium. |
| Ouch, my eyes. Encik Zahari's very nice, very blue DF-02. It has aluminium shocks, hard springs, steel turnbuckles, a high-torque servo saver, and a Sanwa high-speed servo to turn the aluminium ball-raced steering bellcranks. What does all that mean? Well this buggy was jumping like a champ and taking corners like a touring car. |
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For the past month or so, everyone has been talking about this man. Sharif did well in the first two heats but suffered from some problems with his car and his health later in the day. By the time the finals started, he was suffering from leg cramps and a headache. An angiogram a few days later showed four arteries were halfway clogged. Take care of yourself buddy, and hope to see you at the next round. |
| The very friendly Mr Zahari. He offered me a few helpful tips on my driving and jumping even though our buggies crashed into one another often during the race. He even took the time to give Azman a few pointers in the middle of a race when his own buggy was out being repaired by a marshall. |
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Azman finished first in buggy this round, despite some problems with his battery. A few of us have been having problems with the Intellect 3800 stick packs. I know I abused one of mine when I accidentally drained it down to 3 volts so that pack is a goner. Azman had a pack start dumping on him towards the end of a race heat and almost lost that heat to a hard-charging Hafiz. |
| Zul (standing) and Azam. Azam finished 2nd so he is still the overall points leader in the series for the buggy class. |
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The EP offroaders - Ng, me and Uthaya. Ng's buggy was the only one without aluminium shocks in the whole race and yet he finished 3rd. All that despite spending all his pit time pulling out carpet hair from his GT class touring car. Uthaya finished 6th and I finished dead last. |
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Buggy class winners. |
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Stock class winners. |
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GT class winners, including a slightly wet Hafiz. |
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One of everyone. |
| Video highlights of the buggy class races. | |
| Video highlights of the stock and GT classes. |
