WORLDS: Lee, Sahashi, and defending champ Vejrak improve in second round

0 Nov. 10, 2014, 9:40 p.m.

11/11/2014

By Aaron Waldron

LiveRC.com

With so much grip on the asphalt of Huge R/C Project, small changes in ambient weather and humidity make a big difference - just because the track is technically “indoors” due to the enclosed roof and four walls, there’s actually a lot of open air flowing freely throughout the facility. The rising humidity means that that the grip came up even more, which slowed down the overall pace of the second round of timed practice (with two more to go) but played right into the hands of three drivers who jumped into the top ten.

Describing his Novarossi-powered XRAY as “very good,” Nicholas Lee improved from fourth to second and dropped his seed time by .273 seconds. Lee made no changes to his 2014 edition NT1, but remarked that the rising grip level made his car better, and now “it feels okay all over.” He planned no further changes for the third round, opting to see instead how the track conditions continue to change.

Yuya Sahashi, older brother of reigning 1/8-Scale World Champion Tadahiko, jumped to fourth from sixth as he improved his seed time by .242 seconds. The Japanese driver fitted smaller pinion gears to the clutch bell of his Serpent 748 Natrix, which allowed for more “punch” out of the corners. Satisfied with the setup of the car, Yuya will swap to a different Picco engine for the next round in hopes of improving his fuel mileage.

Defending World Champion Meen Vejrak was the biggest mover in the second round, improving from 19th to sixth after going to lighter shock oil and larger pistons to generate more chassis roll in his KM Racing H-K1 Meen Version. The change offered nearly a half second (.498) in his fastest three consecutive laps. In addition to the shock damping change, the local favorite added 20g of ballast to the center of the chassis to help it stay flatter in corners. For the next round, “Meen V” will try running less oil in both front and rear diffs just to see what it will do - he wasn’t sure how the car would react.

Fastest seeding times (three consecutive laps) after Round Two