January 5, 2013

Matsukura wins first A-Main with flawless drive

EOS debutant Naoto Matsukura has won the first leg of the 2WD Buggy A-main with a dominant performance in Germany.  Having secured overall TQ honours earlier in the day the factory Yokomo driver took his B-Max2 MR to a tone to tone victory ahead of defending series champion Joern Neumann with German National Champion Oliver Scholz working his way up from 7th on the grid to complete the Top 3.

A flawless drive from the Japanese ace his rivals were not able to pull off such a clean race.  First to hit trouble was Team Durango’s Joern Neumann, a mistake on the second lap allowing TLR’s Dustin Evans and Tamiya’s Lee Martin through.  Evans would hold the No.2 spot for next five laps but coming through the crossover section his TLR22 traction rolled leaving the American requiring to be marshaled.  Having got back passed Martin earlier this allowed Neumann back up to second. Up front however Matsukura was clearly in control of the race with Neumann’s best efforts not enough to close the gap the pairing separated by 1.6 seconds at the end of the five minutes.

The win is a huge confidence boost for Matsukura who is experiencing European style indoor offroad racing for the first time but the 19-year-old will have to wait till tomorrow to see if he can secure the overall win as the action in Langenfeld now reverts to 4WD with four rounds of qualifying set to bring Day 2 of the EOS Round 2 to a close.

In the 2WD Short Course class, the Top Qualifier also took the win in Leg 1 with local driver Michael Rybski taking his Losi to a 4.5 second winning margin over Tom Bujara with reigning champion & EOS track designer Gerd Strenge taking third from 10th on the grid.

2WD Buggy A-Main Leg 1 Result
1.(1) Naoto Matsukura (JP) – Yokomo – 15/5:15.081
2.(2) Jörn Neumann (DE) – Durango – 15/5:16.682
3.(7) Oliver Scholz (DE) – Team C – 15/5:21.234
4.(4) Lee Martin (GB) – Tamiya – 14/5:00.962
5.(3) Dustin Evans (US) – TLR – 14/5:03.572
6.(5) Hupo Honigl (AT) – Durango – 14/5:05/380
7.(8) Christopher Krapp (DE) – Kyosho – 14/5:09.178
8.(9) Otto Ausfelt (SE) – TLR – 14/5:09.460
9.(6) Darren Bloomfield (GB) – TLR – 14/5:11.142
10.(10)Tom Cockerill (GB) – Schumacher – 10/3:39.386

Complete event results can be found here.

View our event image gallery here.



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