Event: Malaysian Nationals Round 1
Track: Southern Alley Raceway Johor Bahru, Malaysia
Date: February 12th 2012
A great turn out of 130 drivers attended the first round of the Malaysian nationals. With a freshly rebuilt track at the Southern Alley Raceway and plenty of sunshine for the event it looked to be a perfect day for racing. However it had been so hot the track was extremely dry, drivers raced in what was the worlds largest dust pit for the weekend. A tough track due to all the dust, the lack of traction presented plenty of problems for all drivers.
JConcepts Team Driver, Ben Panic headed up from Singapore for the event on Saturday to get some practice in with the drivers and they were greeted with a technical track with lots of jumps and demanding corners, ruts, holes bigger than cars and so much dust it looked like people had their hair colored over the weekend.
Didier Perrin, Daniel Law and Ben Panic battled out the 3 rounds of qualifying and Didier emerged with TQ followed by Ben and Daniel. Unfortunately for Didier his run would end in the semi with a stone getting stuck in the flywheel courtesy of the blown out track. Ben took Semi B with 25 laps and would start on pole for the 45 min main.
The final kicked off and it was mayhem mid pack through the 9 pack of jumps. Cars were flying and marshals were scrambling to get everyone back on their wheels. Ben and David Lim got away and proceeded to gap the whole field. It was like this for the first half of the race but at the 28 min mark Ben ran out of fuel and dropped a lap to David. The next 17 minutes Ben pushed hard and moved from 4th to 2nd but David was a lap ahead and held off Ben for the win, 3rd place was Losi driver Daniel Law. It was a good start to the Nationals Series for the JConcepts driver as Ben had never raced the MP9 before and it showed promise with its JConcepts Tires.
Ben used:
Part# 3044 – JConcepts Inverse Wheels
Part# 2074 – JConcepts Wheel Nuts (black)
Part# 3034-01 – JConcepts Subcultures (blue compound)
Part# 3048-02 – JConcepts Hybrids (green compound)