The Japanese Nats â” JMRCA 1/10th nitro touring Sports and Open class â” was held on September 5-7 at the Hokusei circuit.
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There should have been six rounds of qualifying (3 rounds each on Friday and Saturday) and a Christmas tree final on Sunday, but it rained on Friday and so the three rounds of qualifying were cancelled. This left only 3 rounds of qualifying for both the Sports and Open classes. Qualifying heats were set at 5 minutes and grand the final was 40 minutes long for both classes. Only two drivers were able to go directly to the grand final according to qualifying results.
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Sport class â“ qualifying:
Junichi Mori drove his XRAY NT1 very well in the qualifiers and got TQ. Other XRAY drivers also performed well which put seven XRAY drivers in the Top 10.
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Sport class â“ final:
Six XRAY drivers were in grand final and Junichi Mori needed to have tire change and had around a 10sec gap from the first guy (Mr. Ishikawa) who did not change tires. However, Junichi Mori pushed hard to catch Ishikawa and with 3 minutes left Junichi Mori passed Ishikawa and won!
Open Class
Shimo and Fukuda performed very well in this class in qualifying and in the final. Four XRAY drivers were in grand final. Hiroki Fujita had a constant pace for whole final and got 3rd place at the world-level class for the final. Shimo had a tire change but Fukuda didnâ™t so Fukuda won with a gap of less than 2 seconds from Shimo.
Open Class Grand Final (40 min)
1. Keisuke Fukuda
2. Takaaki Shimo 3. Hiroki Fujita XRAY NT1
4. Toshiyuki Iwamoto XRAY NT1
5. Shinnosuke Yokoyama XRAY NT1
6. Tadahiko Sahashi 7. Kazunori Hamashoji XRAY NT1
8. Shouki Takahata
9. Ken Furukawa
10. Yuya Sahashi
