Tamiya World Championships Race Report

                After the longest day of travelling imaginable, Tom and I arrived at Narita Airport just outside Tokyo to find that the bag with all my racing stuff didn’t make the trip. Locating lost luggage in most countries isn’t too difficult, however when nobody speaks English it becomes interesting. After a couple hours, they were able to track down the bag and notify us that it was still in Toronto. We were told the bag would be sent on the next day’s flight and that we could pick it up the next day. In order to take our minds off the stress of losing such an important bag, Tom and I decided to play a little over-under game as we had been on the plane. This time, it was a little different. The beautiful woman helping us locate our bag spoke perfect English, so we were trying to figure out what nationality she was since she did not look Japanese. Tom placed his bet as American and Korean, while I guessed that she was from the Philippines and mixed with a little American Dad. Turns out I was right, and we completely made her day – the lone bright side of our trip to that point.

After we made our way to the train which would take us to Tokyo, we decided that we should probably get everything new and find a hobby store SOMEWHERE in the electronics district of Tokyo. We asked people on the train from the airport to Tokyo where this electronics district was, and we received the name of the station we get off at – and that was all. So Tom and I with the suitcases we did receive got off the train, made our way through a super busy Tokyo station on a Thursday at rush hour (5:30) to find a hobby store. After walking around for over an hour with no luck finding R/C hobby stores, Tom thought it would be a good idea to buy an R/C magazine, find an advertisement for R/C Champ hobby store and walk around asking people where it was. We made our way to a book store, and up 7 floors on escalators, surrounded by native Japanese people probably wondering why these two large white men had suitcases in a book store, but nonetheless we continued our mission. We found an R/C magazine that had an advertisement for R/C Champ Hobby Store and luckily it had a map – we were in luck!... or so we thought. We walked out of the book store to where all the taxi’s were located and asked pointed to the map on the advertisement and said we wanted to go there. Every cab driver said no because it was too close. So we thought, awesome! – but how close is close? Everyone, let’s just say a close walk in Japan IS NOT a close walk anywhere in Ontario. We walked for over 20min (remember our suitcases are STILL with us, as well as our carryon bags and whatnot) and might have gotten a little lost at times, but we wouldn’t admit to it. We found somebody who spoke sufficient English who pointed us in the right direction and got us to the hobby store. We got there, and started shopping as if we were new to the hobby and needed to get everything – the twist however was that we needed the best of everything that would lead us to a potential world championship. After shopping and deciding what to buy for a very long period of time we checked out. Our bill was around $3000 USD (a lot of yen) and Tom said no way. We figured we would just buy all the non-tamiya stuff that we needed (radio, servo, receiver) and hoped that SOMEONE would have had an extra speed control we could borrow. So we left, made our way back to the main street and got a cab to take us back to the train station so we could make our way to Shizuoka City. Once we got to the train station we realized that the ticket dispensers were automated...in Japanese. Luckily we found somebody who could set us up with the right tickets and took the train back to the main Tokyo station where we got on the bullet train to Shizuoka. We slept for the hour from Tokyo to Shizuoka, and that was our ONLY sleep since we had left Toronto: neither of us slept on the plane on the way to Tokyo. Earlier on the plane we placed another over-under bet as to if it would take more than 24 hours for the trip – we both said over, and sure enough it took 32 hours total (we never knew our bag was lost when we placed this bet). When we arrived at the hotel there was a box waiting for us with my name on it with some parts we ordered. Insert the whole Box and a Dream scenario. I had a box of parts, no car, and a radio. We got our room and were relieved to get 5 hours of sleep before having to leave for the track the next morning.

At breakfast Tom worked his Tamiya magic and arranged to have a car, body, tires, tools, parts, etc., to meet us at the track when we arrived there in an hour or so. We got a 2.0mm hex wrench, the 8-piece Tamiya R/C building set, and that was it. Pliers, speed control, power supply, and paint were just not in the budget. We got the car at 10:30am and planned out our building strategy, finished time was 12:00pm. The body was white...barely – it got the name white lightening! Devon and Dylan White built the shocks and supplied the remaining tools, Tony Tam gave us a speed control, power supply, and motor machine so Tom Wright could tune my motors, and George Canare cut out and prepped my body. We missed the first two rounds of practice, and finished the car about 10min before the 3^rd round of practice not even knowing if the car would run in a straight line. The first practice session was a decent starting point, but the car was down on overall speed. We got the car handling good by the end of the 5^th and final round of practice, but just could not match the overall speed of the front runners. We had some R&D to do that night at the hotel. We decided to go with the 26mm Super Slick M-Grip 2 tires which were 3.5mm larger and would allow for the increase in speed we were looking for. We had the hopes of my bag showing up at the hotel that night, but received a phone call around 8:00pm from one of the Tamiya employees saying that the bag was not showing up and that it would arrive on Saturday night instead (hopefully). Big thanks to Tamiya for arranging and following up on my bag and making all the arrangements for the bag to arrive at the hotel and have us not go back to Narita to pick it up.

Saturday morning did not provide any practice, but we were still uncertain about which insert to run in the tires. About half an hour before the first qualifier I thought “hmm I wish I could squeeze one of the front runners tires to get an idea of what insert they were running.” Tom looked at me as if I was crazy, walked up, squeezed the tire, walked away and said: “What was wrong with that? Go buy part number 53156.” And just like that we had the secret tire combination that was making everyone else so fast. For the first round of qualifying we figured we would take the rear sway bar off the car to play it safe and get a run under ourselves before making drastic changes. The car worked well, but in fact it really needed the rear sway bar that we thought was unnecessary. But luckily it was all for nothing because my car failed tech: guess we should have figured that the tire change was also significantly lighter than the Type A tires – the car was 10g underweight.

In the second round on Saturday I got the car working better, yet still not perfect and finished 8^th overall in the round. Without having a perfect lap, Tom and I felt that we could still do much better. For the third round we added some camber, worked on the motor a little more, and changed the roll center. Since they took the best 2 of 4 rounds it was time for us to start performing. In the final round on Saturday I had a good run and was able to grab 5^th overall in the round setting up the hopes of a decent starting spot for the mains on Sunday. Tom and I both believed that in race conditions I was a more consistent driver than those in front of me and could make up a lot of ground. When we returned to the hotel on Saturday we were informed that my bag would arrive at 11:30 that night, and sure enough the bag arrived at exactly 11:30! Much to the excitement of Tom and I my stuff was all together and had not been damaged from its own adventure. We were not allowed to run my actual car because the car I had been running was tagged, however I was able to run the awesome bodies painted by Nick Imenio at Fastcats and use my own tools and parts! No more having to buy everything we needed.

For the qualifier on Sunday morning the car worked well, but again I was unable to turn that perfect lap. I ended up .2 sec off the TQ time and ended up 6^th in that round. Overall when the qualifying points were calculated I ended up 8^th on the starting grid due to a number of ties in points and without any good runs as tiebreakers I never got the positive end of a tiebreaker. However, the car was great and we were both confident I was going to be able to get through traffic and contend for a podium position, if not the win. The first main did not start as Tom and I had planned. I ran into some trouble at the first corner trying too hard to make quick work of traffic and cost myself a good finish. I fell to last and had to work my way back through a very competitive field of drivers who made me earn every pass. I worked my way back up as high as 5^th but after some great competitive racing fell back to last and back up again to finally finish up the 6min main in 8^th place. Interestingly, with all the racing going on from position 4 onward, everybody finished on the lead lap.

In the second main I had a much smarter and consequently cleaner start. Patience as Tom stressed was more important than outright speed. Taking the old school racers advice I made quick work of two cars on the first lap, then had to fight to pass cars for 5^th, 4^th, and to eventually gain control of 3^rd. It was a great race down to the wire having to fight off the second qualifier for the last 2min of the race in order to hang onto my 3^rd place finish. After the second main Tom and I felt that the podium was definitely in sight, however the overall win had been taken by a very fast young Japanese driver. Our hopes were high for much of the same in the 3^rd main but the dream was crushed before the race even began. The car and radio would not connect to each other for some odd reason and I was unable to start the race: a heartbreaking end to a weekend full of ups and downs. With the 8^th and 3^rd place finishes being my only finishes I ended up 7^th overall once the final points were calculated.

A big thanks goes out to the entire North American team that attended the race. Everyone worked together to help each other make get the most out of our cars. By the end of the weekend it seemed as though everyone had a role: Tom was in charge of batteries and set-up advice, Devon White was in charge of getting the most out of everyone’s motor, Tony Tam was in charge of having every part/accessory imaginable for an R/C car, Dylan helped with whatever needed to be done, and as did George from Tamiya America. It was awesome to have the team work so well together and support each other.

The experience was something worth witnessing in itself. Tamiya had a staff member for everything. They had translators on hand, people who would remind you when you had to go to tech, marshal, eat, drink, and everything imaginable! One of the translators actually felt the need to inform Tom that his name is very fun!? – we didn’t get it either!  The show was also something special. I was fortunate enough to shake hands with Mr. Tamiya himself and engage in conversation with him which is rare. He amazed me at how passionate he is about his company; even at 72 years old he works from 9-6 everyday. The show was also interesting. Marc Rhinehard’s world championship winning car and trophy was there, the first R/C car was there, as well as two cars from the JGTC Super Autobacs series were there, as well as Peter Solberg’s Subaru STi rally car. Even Tamiya TRF drivers Marc Rhinehard, Gillies Groskamp, Satoshi Maezumi and Victor Wilik were in attendance to race in the GT Victory class and provide support for all the drivers.

Sunday night all the overseas drivers went to dinner and then Satoshi took us to one of the local Japanese Karaoke bars. We had a blast, since everyone participated, including Gillies Groskamp, Dylan White, myself, and Borgfeldt’s own Tom Wright sang Hotel California! Although the race didn’t go anything like we had in mind, the trip was definitely a memorable one that helped teach some valuable life-lessons. Big thanks to Tamiya Inc., and Borgfeldt for supporting this series over the last 10 years which has provided some great experiences for drivers such as myself. Five years ago when my Dad brought me to my first TCS Race in Kingston, Ontario I never thought I would see the day where I would be given this opportunity to race at an International event where there was a Canadian flag hung behind the drivers stand just for me. At 15 I knew nothing about racing, except for the fact that if you didn’t win, you lost. My Dad helped teach everything about how to properly work on a car and to pay attention to the fine details that make a car fast. Although his background was in drag-racing, he helped me grow and do my own thing when I thought I was right, even though he knew that I was wrong – the only way to learn is to find out for yourself. I must also thank Tom for everything:  he pretty much brought me into the hobby and up through the ranks of TCS racing, and taught me how to overcome the emotional rollercoaster ride that racing usually provides. Most importantly for making the weekend happen in the first place and especially after everything we had to overcome. Good luck to the drivers competing at next year’s events.

Steve Bortolotti

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