Team Durango’s commitment to creating the best engineered and performing racing cars continued this weekend when the DNX408 was, once again, put through its paces by Team Durango drivers Hupo Honigl and Martin Achter.

The testing period for any new car is intense, but for the DNX408 it has been especially so.  Because there are so many 1/8 nitro buggies available for the RC racer to choose from, Team Durango want to ensure that when we release our 1/8 nitro buggy into an already crowded class, we do so with a leading-edge car that is as strong and reliable as it is innovative.

Team Durango’s philosophy of only releasing a car when we are 100% happy with it means that we have to test, re-test and test again.  If more testing is required, we do it.  We are serious about racing and we are very serious about pre-production testing.

Hupo sent us this report from the race:

“A lot good drivers attended the race at Bischofscheim: Neumann, Drescher, Ronnefalk, Svenson, Reckward, as well as many top German drivers.

Gerd made some subtle changes to a couple of parts and all I can say is that they work awesome!

In the first practice run the car felt already pretty good, but the shocks were too soft and also the diffoils were too soft. I changed from 5k-5k-2k to 10k-10k-2k and changed the shockoil to 10 harder in the front and 5 harder in the rear. This helped a lot.

In qualifying I experimented with the front suspension link positions – in the end the car was really good, and I was right on pace. I finished 4th – 4th – 3rd – 2nd – 1st, and ended up 3rd overall.

In the semi I had a pretty hard battle with Neumann – about 3 mins before the end I was in the lead, but then a lapped driver took me out which cost me about 6 seconds. I missed TQ by 4 seconds.

For the final I went from M2 compound (medium) to XTR (hard) I was 100% sure that would be better because the weather was quite warm and the track was very hard-packed.  At the beginning of the final I took it easy, waiting for the tyres to start working – but unfortunatly they never really got better – so I started to push a little harder. By this time I was in 2nd, but the gap was already pretty big to Jörn.

I pushed the car harder and it handled very well and I got a little closer to Jörn. At about 5 minutes before the end, I was only 2 corners away from him, but then another backmarker hit me, and Jörn was gone.

Well done to Jörn who won the race.  I finished 2nd with Reckward 3rd.

Martin Achter did a great job for Team Durango, and he also made it to the main final – but he had an issue with his cluch early in the run.

With a little more experience and fine-tuning the car got even better, and I felt very comfortable with it!  I really like this car and I am sure other RC racers will love

[View with PicLens]

Well done Hupo and Martin!

Team Durango Design Engineer Michael Vollmer got the first victory with the DEX410R in the North German Indoor Off-Road track RC-Glashaus (www.rc-glashaus.de)!

After practice on Friday with some other TEAM DURANGO DEX410-owners, the team found, step-by-step, a great set-up for their cars for the very difficult and bumpy Glashaus racetrack.

It was great to see the Team Durango drivers all working together so well and efficiently to find set-ups and talk to each other about the car. The DEX410R was a bit more forgiving for Michael to drive. The composite siderails are softer than the aluminium-siderails, so they create a little more flex in the chassis.

Michael said, “It´s fantastic how the car reacts, when you change something with your set-up! You feel every small change in adjustment on the track.”

He continued, “The key to winning this race was easy: driving without faults! I am not a top-level driver, but my many years’ RC experience and clean driving-style without faults gave me the win. It was amazing to see the teamwork! 70% of the A-finalists drove DEX410 and all the DEX410 racers were able to faster and faster over the weekend; all because of great teamwork! At the end of the day, all DEX410 drivers improved their driving-level.”

Well done Michael!

Find Michael’s winning set-up check the online setups section:

http://www.team-durango.com/in-the-pits.php?partNo=TD102001&country=de&dir=Glashaus_DE

Team Durango’s partner for Belgium, M2D-shop, told us that last weekend at the 2nd round of the Belgium nationals, the DEX410 finished 1st, 2nd and 10th in the A-main.

1st    Erik Michiels  -  Team Durango Belgium
2nd  Steven Stappaerts  -  Team Durango Belgium
10th  Theo Van Laer  -  Team Durango Belgium

Well done Team Durango Belgium!

After months of winter testing all over the UK the Durango team made their way to the 1st round of the BRCA national championships at Talywain in Wales.

After a recent test day at a similar style Astro track, the team had made good progress with the set-up on the 410, with each driver fine-tuning the car to suit their individual style. The Talywain crew had laid out a tough track for the national with precision and accuracy required as the times were close between the top 20 in each round. Clean runs were hard to come by, but those who could run clean for 5 minutes benefited with good round scores.

In Qualifying the Team were straight on the pace with Craig, Nathan and Adam all posting top 20 times in round 1. A host of drivers including Richard Coates and Graham North were just outside the top 20.

With the team sharing set-up info, drivers who struggled in round 1 got their cars on the pace for round 2 and the team moved forward, dropping their lap times and putting in good results. Craig tried the double jump on the ‘warm-up’ lap, and by his own admission ‘got it very wrong’ putting himself out of the running for round 2. Nathan and Adam both posted top 20 times, improving on their previous times.

In round 3 Craig pretty much secured his A final place with another top 10 round score and Nathan got his meeting going with a top 10 score also. Adam matched his 14th in R2 with another in R3. Richard Coates got a score to back up his R1 score to put him in the C.

Round 4, Craig cemented his A final place with another top 10 round score. Nathan made some changes to his set-up and although he got his best round score of the weekend he just missed out on the A, getting the unlucky BQ spot.

To say Craig was pleased at making the A with his DEX410 was an understatement.

The finals didn’t quite go to plan for Craig, the racing in the mid field was super close and any slight mistake was soon caplitalised on by the field. The competetiveness of the competition was shown with 2nd to 5th place after 3 legs being taken by drivers on six points.

The rest of the team faired as follows

B Final

Nathan Waters

Adam Skelding

C Final

Richard Ralph

Chris Bowater

Richard Coates

D Final

James Helliwell

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With a the first full ‘Outdoor’ National under its belt, and more set-up info gleaned from the collective minds of the team, the team move on to Round 2 @RHR with more success in mind.

You too can grab the set-up information from the team @ http://www.team-durango.com/in-the-pits.php?partNo=TD102001

Check the Talywain drop down from the menu.

Huge thanks to our friends @ oOple for the photos of the ‘Hulk’ and qualifying / final information.

An in depth report of the meeting can be found here: http://www.oople.com/rc/photos/2010national-talywain/

Our friends at Petit RC (http://www.petitrc.com) were kind enough to let us know that top Team Durango France and Petit RC driver Cyril Baldini won the event in fine style.

“Last weekend was the second French round in Antibes (south of France) and our Team Durango/PETITRC driver Cyril took his second series win in a row!

He did TQ and an easy victory. THE top driver of the weekend.”

Well done to Cyril and Petit RC.