Shepherd Success at HobbyPro Open

 

The HobbyPro Open took place in Hong Kong over the weekend of 5-7 November and was organised by HobbyPro owner and Shepherd importer Stephen Shih. There were 160 drivers in three classes including 1:8, 1:10 and 220mm making it one of the biggest races in Hong Kong. After a long flight, Team Shepherd arrived on Thursday, including Italian top-driver Daniele Ielasi, Swiss talent Simon Kurzbuch and for the first time driving a nitro touring car, European Champion in 1:10 electric Ronald Völker.

After chatting at this year’s Touring Car Masters in Eppelheim, Ronald was very eager to drive a nitro touring car in 2010, but with a full calendar for both Ronald and Team Shepherd, the only race left was in Hong Kong. Joining Ronald for the race was Worlds finalist in 2009, Robin d’Hondt from Belgium.Normally, the event would start on Friday with free practice, then four seven-minute qualifiers on the Saturday and finals on Sunday, but the weather wasn’t as good as everybody hoped through Friday and Saturday there was a lot of rain. However, the “TRC-Track” also includes a covered electric track, where Ronald finally drove the Velox V10 for his first time and he was very happy with the result. In spite of the bad weather 140 drivers started with qualifying on Sunday at 7:30am without any practice! To save some time the organisers made the qualifiers four minutes long and cut the A final down to 30 minutes. The track was still damp until 10:00am, so everybody only had two qualification runs on a dry track.

Top qualifier in 1:8 was Daniele Ielasi (14 laps 4:18.30) who also made the fastest lap (18.085) and second Simon Kurzbuch (13 laps 4:05.921) both using the Velox V8 whilst in third position was Robin d’Hondt (13 laps 4:06.724). The fastest 1:10 driver after two rounds was Ronald Völker with 12 laps in 4:13.325 but Ronald would have to settle for second on the grid after a car crashed into him during his third run.
In the 1:10 A final, from the beginning, Ronald was very fast. To be safe, he refuelled every four minutes and because of his consistent lap times and fast pit stops, he took the lead after 22 minutes. Unfortunately he had a flame-out during the last pit stop and he lost a lap. In the end he was in third position behind the winner Hung Cheung Hang from Hong Kong.
Finally, it was time for the 1:8 A final and as it was already dark the floodlights were switched on. After eight minutes Daniele was a lap in front of all other drivers but after ten more minutes, his car lost more and more steering because there was no more rubber on his left front tyre. As there was no possibility to practice, the tyre wear was much higher than expected and he had to do an unscheduled tyre change. In the end Daniele finished in third position but with his good lap times he showed everybody how fast his Velox V8 was. The winner was Luk Chi Hung from Hong Kong driving a Velox V8 as Simon Kurzbuch ended up in fourth position due to some mistakes caused by the unfamiliar conditions under the floodlights.
At the end of the day Stephen Shih organized a huge raffle with a Velox V8 and a Velox V10 as top prices sponsored by Shepherd Micro Racing. Afterwards there was a big Asian buffet with some additional pasta for the European people.

Source: Shepherd