TAMIYA ASIA CUP QUALIFYING SERIES ROUND 5 (MALAYSIA)
Date: July 16, 2006.
Venue: 1 Utama Shopping Centre
Classes: Buggy, Stock Touring, GT Touring, M-chassis
Organisers: Tamiya Underground
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It was great to be racing at 1 Utama again. This time, the track had 3 long straights around the outside. |
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Ng pitted next to me and had some interesting ideas on how to keep tabs on his batteries. |
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The stars of the show were the M-chassis cars, which turned out in full force to fill up 3 qualifying groups. Au's car here was the only M-04. All the others were the front wheel drive M-03, M-03M or M-03L. Almost everybody opted for a Mini Cooper or BMW Mini bodyshell, so the class was often referred to the class as "the Mini class". These cars were literally flying and turn-marshalling them sometimes involved catching them in mid-air. |
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Out of some coincidence, there was a BMW mini promotion upstairs where the winner got to drive the car for a week. |
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In the GT class, both Leonards were sporting new blue spur holders on their TA-05s. |
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Once again, Hafiz's TB-02R proved to be very fast, even at this very straight track. |
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But the man to beat was two-time Asia Cup champ Alvin Koh (the guy in blue using the setup board and eyeballometer) from Singapore who TQ'd and led Hafiz all the way to the finish line. Alvin graciously donated his lucky draw prize back to the pool for other racers to win. |
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Nadzri's TA-04, still going strong. Hope we'll see more of it next season. |
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As always Thomas Teoh has a great looking shell. He can paint one of these in a day, but he took his time on this one and took about a week. There are no stickers on his shells. The headlights and details are all airbrushed on. |
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Ng, on the other hand, had the most recognisable shell. My wife liked it a lot and promised to paint me one. I'm not sure if I'll take her up on that offer. |
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Buggy class results were boringly predictable with Azam in first, Azman in 2nd, Hafiz with car trouble in both finals, Ng third and me fourth. The series ended with Azam, Azman and Zahari in 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively. |
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I had problems with the Tamiya plugs coming loose in the first 2 heats, so I wrapped them with almost enough fibre tape to make them a permanent feature of the chassis. Thanks for the help from Hobby Haven. |
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With racers participating in 3 groups of M-chassis, 3 groups of GT, 2 groups of stock and 1 group of buggy, pit space was at a premium. |
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There was also a scale-model building competition to promote Tamiya static models. |
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A view from the top. All in all, a great day of fun and a great end to the qualifying season. |
