Stringer crowned New Zealand national champion

0 Nov. 3, 2015, 7:01 p.m.

By Aaron Waldron
LiveRC.com

Race report from REDS Racing:
www.reds-racing.com

Stringer wins the New Zealand Nationals - Race report by Mark and Aaron Stringer

We arrived Wednesday afternoon to a wet and windy Christchurch for the New Zealand Buggy and Truggy National Championships. A quick check of the (very wet) track and the it was off to our accommodation to unpack and get set for Thursday practice.

The rain did manage to abate overnight and allowed some controlled practice until mid afternoon when the skies opened up again and practice was done for the day.

Qualifying

There was to be 4 rounds of qualifying with the best 2 to count. It was clear from practice their were some fast local guys and a handful of fast Aussies had made the trip over.

Friday dawned bright and sunny but very cold. The track was changing at an amazing rate making tire selection critical. After 3 rounds on Friday we had 2 TQ's for each class which gave us overall TQ for both classes.

Saturday

With only 1 round of qualifying and with TQ rapped up we tested some set options for the finals. Aaron managed another TQ in each class to give us 3 out of 4 TQ's for each class

Finals

Sunday rolled around with a very warm day predicted which would once again make tire choice critical!!!

The semi warm up was held early in the morning (temps around 7 degrees) and with the finals being mid afternoon it was impossible to test any tires as the temps for around the finals time was around 24 degrees.

We managed to navigate though both 30 minute semi's unscathed and take the pole for each final.

Truggy Final

The starts left a little bit to be desired with the cars bunched up very tightly. Aaron got a bad start and allowed Kyosho driver Shane Van Gisenberg to get away at the start and saw Aaron back in 6th or 7th. Aaron manged to round up Shane over the next few minutes and after a tense battle Aaron managed a clean pass and started to pull away. Unfortunately with over a lap lead we suffered a mechanical failure which saw us DNF.

Buggy

Determined to make amends in the Buggy, Aaron drove a superb race to lead every lap and take the win by over 2 laps to 2nd and 4 laps to 3rd. Overall the REDS R5T Team Edition performed faultlessly all weekend in both cars in temps that ranged from 0 to 24 degrees.