"Urban Achievers" team won 12 Heures du Tamiya endurance race

0 Oct. 16, 2015, 12:38 p.m.

By Aaron Waldron
LiveRC.com

Race report from Tamiya America:
www.tamiyausa.com

The 12 Heures du Tamiya!

The 12 Heures du Tamiya is a radio control car race that took place on October 3, 2015 at Tamiya America’s world famous race track in Aliso Viejo, California. Unlike traditional RC car racing formats run at Tamiya Raceway, the 12 Heures du Tamiya was formulated to be an endurance race which spanned 12 long hours much in the same way as seen in Petit Le Mans. To further add to the uniqueness of the event, the fourteen 5-man teams were required to build a spec Tamiya TT-02 Type R 4WD on-road kit and race it the same day!

The kit building portion of the event took about 3 hours. After the teams finished building they had roughly one and a half to 2 hours to tune their machines and make sure they were ready for the start of the race.

The Tamiya race track is not a lighted facility. The rules of the event required the teams to run a Tamiya GT body that was capable of running its proprietary LED light system. The teams received their GT body kit two weeks prior to the event. By having the bodies early, it allowed the teams to uniquely paint and pre-install their light units prior to the building portion of the event.

The 12 hour race got under way at 12:07pm and concluded at 12:07am the following morning.

Once dusk fell over the Tamiya Raceway the lights came on and the only thing helping the drivers guide their race cars around the track was their light system and the muscle memory they had developed for the first half of the race!

The 12 Heures du Tamiya proved that R/C car racing can be a team sport and activity using an inexpensive Tamiya entry level touring car. The Tamiya TT-02 chassis is a well-balanced and drivable basic 4wd machine. It incorporates many new features to make it easy for new R/C kit builders to assemble and learn from. It has identical left and right suspension parts for no-fuss assembly, and gearboxes are easy to maintain. Furthermore, the TT-02 chassis performs well as cornering and overall speed take advantage of new electronics available on the market. In addition to the TT-02 being an ideal platform to start your R/C racing hobby, hobbyists can expand its potential by adding many of the Hop-Up-Options available to increase the cars speed and performance. As the 12 hours proved the TT-02 chassis performed well and was more than durable to take on twelve long hours of continuous running.

As in all forms of sports and competition, people like stats. The winning team turned 2,205 laps, which someone took the time to figure out equaled to 187 miles!