Ronald Völker and Alexandre Duchet new European Champions with LRP!

This year’s edition of the 1/10 Electric Onroad European Championships in TC Modified, TC Stock and Formula was held in Almussafas near Valencia in Spain. Of course the whole LRP Spain staff was in attendance and did greatly support the LRP team throughout the events. The Spanish colleagues did even take LRP team support Ales Dobnikar on a tour around beautiful Valencia!

The conditions were dry, sunny and hot throughout the week, as is typical for this time of the year. But on Saturday morning, it was uncharacteristically rainy, leading to a 1.5h delayed start of the finals.

All major European 1/10 Electric Onroad drivers were in attendance to struggle for the title. LRP team driver and defending European Champion Ronald Völker had set his aim on winning an incredible 8th European title. The track layout was very large and open but technical, making it difficult to overtake on a track with low grip in the morning and medium grip in the evening. Top speeds of close to 120 km/h were measured. In reality, it was even higher because the measuring point in TC Modified was before the breaking point. In Stock, 79 km/were achieved with 13.5T motors. This almost equaled speed of last year’s 10.5t motors!

In TC Modified it was a battle for the TQ between Bruno Coelho and Ronald throughout qualifying, with Ronald taking 4 of 6 rounds over Bruno. Ronald even managed to save 2 sets of tires for the finals on Saturday. As usual, this was very close racing, but Ronald`s Yokomo prepared by Umino worked brilliantly this time and the power package (Flow X setting: v4.1, 3-2-4-2-2-7-5-3-2 ) with the new X22 motor was perfectly setup by Ales and was on point every run.

Ronald started A-Main 1 from the pole position. But because of the rain in the morning, Ronald decided not to risk it with the new tires and rather went for the used set from qualifying. The tactic did not work out for him as the grip was not as good and made it hard to defend the lead. Marc Rheinhard consequently won the first final ahead of Bruno. Ronald even retired from the run after spinning out four times. A very much improved Viljami Kutvonen was the best LRP driver, finishing 4th.

A-Main 2 in contrast was an easy affair for Ronald, as he effortlessly won on a now grippy surface ahead of Bruno, who again came in second - this time ahead of Marc. All came down to A-Main 3 with Ronald, Bruno and Marc all still having a chance to win the Euro title. It was an exceptional run by Ronald, who managed to control the advantage with relative ease and offered Bruno and Marc no chance to come close. This is now Ronald’s 8th European Championship title!

In the Stock class, Alexandre Duchet, vice champion from 2016 in Trencin and now LRP top driver in Stock, was too fast for everybody with his LRP Flow X Stock Spec v5.1 (setting: 0-0-0-6-4-0-/-/-2), Reedy 13.5T 1S motor and 8000 battery. He TQ’d easily ahead of Jan Ratheisky and Tom Krägefski. Max Mächler qualified 5th with the same power combo as Alexandre.

A-Main 1 saw a very close battle at the beginning. Right in the first lap, the very fast Jimmy Maddison managed to get in front of Alexandre and the pair touched slightly with Alexandre having the better luck and retaining the lead. From there on, it was a perfect run for him to secure the win in A-Main 1. Alexandre was just unbeatable in A2 and controlled the race to the title - his first ever European Championship title!  With Alexandre already being European Champion, it was Jan Ratheisky and Andrea Valerio who got 2nd and 3rd on the podium.

The qualifying in the Formula class was a battle for grip with Jan Ratheisky taking TQ, while LRP team driver Olivier Bultynck struggled a little with grip and qualified 5th. But Olivier had a great first A-Main and managed the low grip conditions exceptionally well. He took the win from 5th position ahead of Hector Albarracin and David Ehrbar.

The second A-Main saw Jan finishing ahead of Martin Hudy and Ivan de la Calle. Jan also managed to win the deciding A-Main 3 ahead of Olivier and Martin, crowing himself as the European Champion and making Olivier (Flow X setting: v5.1, 0-1-0-2-0-0-/-/-2) a great Vice Champion in the Formula class!

Overall, a great Euro event for LRP and our team drivers by winning two of three titles and finishing a close second in the third. Congratulations to you achievements!