| Race report by Kelvin Ngow |
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| The group attending the Borneo Open 1/8 Off-road Race from West Malaysia consisted of myself driving an XRAY and LRP Lipo batteries, David Lim with his Kyosho and Werks engine and fuel, Chai Kok Chin on his Nanda and Go Tech engines, and Alexius Lee driving a Nanda and Go Tech engines. We arrived on Thursday (the day before the race) and went to check out the track. The track has a layout like an on-road track, not so different from a Euro-style track. It consisted of 12 corners, double jumps on the straights, a pair of smaller jumps in the infields, and some wood-made whoops. The track was damp and heavy with some puddles. |
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We still had to wait for our fuel coming in from Kuching some 5 hrs away. It started to rain not long after we got our fuel, so no testing was done.
On raceday morning we had a late start due to a wet track after the previous dayâ™s downpour. We were all still undecided on what tyres to use. Chai Kok Chin was first to run in Group 1; he tried Medial Pro Turbo and managed to get a decent run with 14 laps in 10min15sec. I was in the next group, and I tried Medial Pro Diamond. I started the heat on a very fast pace, clocking the best lap of the event with a 39.688sec run, but I ran out of fuel on the last corner before the transponder, so I possibly missed out on a TQ run. David was in the next group following mine, and he tried Proline Cell Block. This was not a good tyre choice as he was spinning the wheels and understeering, plus he flamed out twice after the refueling pit stop. So, not a good start for me or David. |
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In the second heats Chai Kok Chin had car trouble. I drove the next heat on a slightly more conservative pace as I did not get my insurance in the 1st heat, and also one of the wooden whoops section became unable to blast through. This resulted in lap times 1sec slower. I finished the heat 4sec behind Chai Kok Chin. David changed his tyres to Werks W and did his 14 lapper only 2sec behind me. The last 14 lapper was done by Foo from Miri some 15sec behind David. Foo showed considerable driving improvement this year.
After bagging our insurance, David and I were looking to have a cracking heat 3. It rained heavily right after completion of Group 1. So TQ went to Chai Kok Ckin, who subsequently became Champion.
Borneo Open A main qualifying results after two heats (No Finals due to rain):
1. Chai Kok Chin
2. Kelvin Ngow / XRAY XB8EC
3. David Lim
4. Foo
5. Alexius Lee
6. Francis Ling
7. Josef Tiong
8. Jhery
9. Hulba
10. Shenton Tok |
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| The track was supposed to be taken down next week. The land owner, a Datuk was so impressed with the event, and we West Malaysians coming all the way to support and seeing many happy racers, decided to make the track permanent until he develop the piece of land. Simon Yii can now plan for a big Borneo Cup in December 2007. We will all be looking forward to that. David, Chai and I were happy to go over there and do some hobby promotional work. We met some very nice people and passed on lots of useful tips to them and we also helped to rebuild some of their cars on our first day there. All in all a good outing. |
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