Maurizio Basile had a great weekend racing his Tamiya TRF102 at the Italian Nationals.. here is his race report 🙂
26-27th November was the date for the Italian Indoor RC Championship in Venetico Messina Sicily. There were several categories running at the the event, so this time I decided to participate in the Formula one category.
In this Championship I wanted to compete with all the others with my old TAMIYA TRF102 chassis. This was going to always be a steep challenge as the TRF102 was released in 2015, so it would be interesting to see how it would fair against the more modern chassis from other manufacturers.
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The race was run on Matrix brand foam tyres, this is not very common as usually the F1 class runs rubber tyres. It was going to be an interesting weekend of racing.
Saturday morning the day began with free practice. Right from the start I noticed that I’m very competitive, so much so that I set the fastest lap.
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The situation changes in the afternoon, when I had had the two timed heats. The main difference was that I had swapped out to a new set of tyres with a different diameter, as the rules had been clarified, so drivers were not allowed any tyre truing on the lathe.
The TRF102 was running well, despite having adjusted the new heights, but as the day progressed and more rubber started to be placed down, grip rolling was starting to appear.
Having little experience with F1 on carpet, I began using additional weights to try to combat the grip rolling.
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I started by placing 5g on the front wing and this instantly provided some positive effects. I was feeling good about the car, and the speed and felt very competitive. However, as can happen in racing a series of unfortunate contacts with some other drivers impacted my overall race pace.
In the end I managed a very respectable 3rd place on the starting grid for the finals with the TRF102.
Before the finals, I was aware that the track grip was getting even more extreme. Therefore I decided to change the set-up by adding even more weight on the front wing.. ending up with a sizeable 20g
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Now it was time for the First final, I immediately get behind the first driver but after several contacts with of the lapped drivers I finished my race in sixth position.
By now the race is won by Pietro Lucifora, after having already won two finals. But the final two podium positions were still up for grabs so there was everything to play for. It was down to me to do well in the third final.
On the sound of the tone we raced away for this critical final, I quickly got into first place and felt comfortable throughout the entire final until 2 laps from the end.
In a stroke of bad luck, a lapped driver clipped the back of my car after being passed. As I recovered my direct rival in second place passed me and despite my best attempts I couldn’t pass him before the end of the race, leaving me in second place. It’s like this in racing, you need to have a good set-up, a good chassis but also a bit of luck.
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However I am very happy with my result, 3rd overall in a national championship is an excellent result.
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Importantly it was a great event with lots of very good racers and a friendly atmosphere.
My overall impressions of the performance of my TRF 102 model were: fun to drive and at the same time very competitive.. This chassis drives very well with foam tyres on carpet 🙂
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My Tamiya TRF102 chassis is equipped with a TEAM POWER ESC and motor and with MARKA batteries. This combination ended up working really well and despite my initial concerns about the age of the chassis it was very competitive even against the other much newer chassis.
I plan to continue using this model until Tamiya replaces it with a new TRF F1 chassis.