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Infinity IF14 Build review and Settings Part 3 Race Reports

At the Track, Infinity IF14 Race report We really wanted to explore the potential of the Infinity IF14 so here is a rather in-dept race re...

At the Track, Infinity IF14 Race report

We really wanted to explore the potential of the Infinity IF14 so here is a rather in-dept race report about the Infinity IF14 that Florian raced over 4 different race events, from a low-grip club race to the ETS race in Vienna Austria.

The first race was at the new Lovan track in Alveringen, Belgium. It was a brand new ETS carpet track, so there wasn’t much traction from the start.


We used this race as a test for the first Essex Winter Series race so we used Sweep 28 tyres.

To cope with the low grip conditions, we tried different things and finally settled with this setup. The car was still tricky to drive, especially on-power and mid corner. It lacked steering as well, so I put 3mm bump steer shims.
His competitors were running the faster Volante 28 tyres, but he managed to win the race.

EWS Race Report

The next race we did was the EWS race at Thundersley. This is a nice one-day event and it attracts about 100 races. Florian again participated in mod. There were 4 heats, so he was up for a tougher opposition.

The track also started off as low grip, but the new carpet gradually evolved to medium grip levels. His car was again difficult to drive, and Florian couldn’t accelerate out of the corner. The car sometimes had snap-oversteer mid-corner as well. I exchanged his new set of tyres with a set he used at the previous race, and his car was better afterwards.
Daniel Booker, a fellow TRF driver who also raced an IF14, redid the diff. He used 5000k oil, but more importantly exchanged the Infinity o rings for black Tamiya ones.

The diff was smoother afterwards, and Florian eventually managed to squeeze into the B main by recording the 19th time. He was however one lap and 6 seconds off the FTD, and his fastest lap time some .8 seconds off Olly Jeffries’ time.

There was only a single final, and this plaid into his advantage. With some smart and conservative driving, he finished in P3 of his heat and P13 overall. You can see a video of his final here:

The setup of the car can be found here:

The main changes were a lower droop value in order to get some more grip into the tyres, harder shock oil, softer diff oil and a bit higher ride height to cope with the bumps in the carpet.

Tonisport Masters, Arena 33

Arena 33 is the racetrack of the Rheinhard family. It is a great facility in Andernach, and is about 300kms away from where we live.

Marc was present at this race, and he headed a strong Infinity squad with Yannic Prumper and Dominic Vogl as the other drivers. Xray’s Marco Kaufman was also present while Awesomatix had a strong squad with Viljami Kutvonen, Freddy Sudhof and the young and talented Thimo Weisbauer.

The track had extreme grip, perhaps the highest grip level we have seen so far, so Florian not only had a tough competition but also faced a difficult track.
Wesley wrenching on the car
We were again faced with a very difficult car to drive, as it again had snap oversteer in the fast corners. Florian had to be easy on the throttle. I had Wesley Van Dijken, a fast Dutch driver who also races an IF 14. We compared the car to his IF14 and we found it had too much uptravel. Wesley kindly offered to set the car up and he reduced the damper length from 9.5 to 9.0. This improved the car, and it was easier to drive.
Uwe Rheinard and Florian at race control
There were only two mod drivers not to use an aluminium chassis, and Florian was one of them. His pace was highly impacted by this.

At last year’s TOS, Florian’s best laptime was .7 behind Ronald Volker. Now it was a massive 1.3 seconds during qualifying. He just managed to scrape into the B main with a P20 starting slot (out of 26 drivers).

Thanks to Wesley’s modifications, his car went a bit better in the finals. As we had nothing to lose, I decided to put all the screws in the lower deck. Thanks to this modification, his car went faster, but still 1 second off the pace.

In A3 I also screwed the screw in the upper top deck, but Florian didn’t like it that much. You can see a video of his last final over here:


At one point he was running in P4, but got taken out by a backmarker. A car heavily crashed into him, but his IF14 survived it without a problem. He carried on with a heavily tweaked car (after the crash he lost .2 per lap compared to before) and finished P16 overall.

The setup can be found here;

TRAINING RACING ARENA LIMBURG and ARENA 33

After the race in Arena 33, I disassembled the car and replaced the worn parts (front outdrives)
Aluminium chassis, damper mounts and Hiro Seiko screw kit.
More excitedly I was able add some new parts. I mounted the optional aluminium chassis and optional shock towers. As Florian also received his first delivery from Hiro Seiko, I also mounted the red and titanium screw kit on his car in order to compensate the additional weight of the aluminium chassis.

Florian noticed the car was easier to drive and the corner speed was also higher.

On his first run he got a 12.7 out of the car (his previous best was 12.6 so this was already encouraging). I still had to find some more time though.

For the second run I went to an Xray 2.7 spring in the back and put the rear dampers one position higher (hole 3) to give the car more onpower steering. This worked quite well and his laptime was down to 12.445, his personal best on this track and a bit faster than his TRF419X (12.556).

For the next two runs we tried different bodyshells. As it didn’t yield an advantage, we reverted back to the Bittydesign M410 and did one last run. Florian did a 12.447 so we headed back home.

Test Arena 33

As it was the weekend before the first ETS race in Vienna, many RC hotshots were present, with reigning world champion Ronald Volker spearheading the Yokomo team.

Our first run was pretty bad. Florian managed a 14.4 (during the Tonisport Masters he recorded a 14.2), but his car was extremely difficult to drive. I had a quick chat with Ronald and he kindly offered to drive the car. After two laps he said there was a major issue with the car, and that it was probably down to the tyres.

We left the car unchanged and only mounted new Volante tyres. From a hyper nervous beast, the IF14 transformed to a mildly understeering car. Florian ran the tyres in for 2 more packs and then we started to work on the setup again.

During his last run, he recorded a 13.9, which was .3 seconds faster than his previous best at the track.

ETS Vienna, Austria

His race was largely compromised by a very bad timed practice. His car was again quite a handful to drive. It didn’t have a lot of grip and was under-steering into the corner and over-steering at corner exit. It wasn’t down to an overpowered car, because contrary to the previous races I put a Hobbywing V2 6,5 turn with a 12.3 rotor in his car. To make up for the lesser speed on the straight I added 30 degrees of turbo and a higher gear ratio.

Florian ended with a 63rd practice time, which set him back in the first group of qualifiers. What worried us more was his complete lack of pace, as he was 1,7 seconds off the pace of the front runners.

Q1
Florian’s was downbeat before the qualifiers started. I had a quick chat with Jitse Miedema, one of the Infinity team drivers and Kotonori Fujiwara. They suggested to bring the rear arms completely to the front in order to change the weight distribution of the car.I also put SMJ 3.0 springs on the car. In his group, Florian had good pace, but as most drivers were slower, he lost some time lapping them even if they were very fair and opened the door.

His best laptime in Q1 improved and was at 14.1, but it was still too slow, and he had a lack of steering, especially mid-corner and exit.

Q2
I changed the springs to SMJ purple (progressive 2.8~3.0) and SMJ Pink (3.2) in the back. I fitted a 1.3 stabilizer to the back. I also changed the oil in the dampers to 350 Tornado and put the diff and spool in the higher postion. He improved his lap time to 13.8 and overall time by 8 seconds.

Q3/Q4
In order to get a bit more corner speed I used 2,5mm shims instead of 2mm shims on the inner bulkhead and reprogrammed his Hobbywing speedo (added 5 degrees of boost timing). His car was best in Q4, but he was inadvertently taken out by a back marker, so he couldn’t capitalise that run. His best laptime was down to 13.560.

He qualified in P53, which was lower than he hoped for.

Finals

In the finals, Florian started P2 and ended P3. His motivation had taken a big hit because he expected to be much more competitive. He did manage to squeeze a 13.394 out of the car (Marc Rheinhard did 12.7), but wasn’t driving as sharp as he could.

Conclusion:

During the races, we got quite a bit of help (Daniel Booker, Wesley Van Dijken) and on the ETS race Jitse Miedema, Akio Sobue and Kotonori Fujiwara were very knowledgeable. In my opinion, a good setup for a TRF or T4 works well for most drivers, but on the IF14 you need to experiment a lot to find the setup that suits you best.

The car is quick, but to realise the potential of the car it seems that you need to buy a lot of options to make the car more competitive (motor mount, damper supports, …).
Tip from Fujiwara-san - Wrap DJC in shinktape to prevent pin coming out.
There are also two important points I overlooked when setting up the car:

The diff needs to be absolutely perfectly build. Daniel Booker gave me the tip to use black Tamiya O rings to seal the diff. You also need to grind the gears down, because even with these O rings it wasn’t as smooth as it should be. I also replaced one of the large 0,3mm shims with a Tamiya 0,1 shim.
Jitse Checking the Uptravel
I normally set my cars up by doing the downstop. If you take the same measurements as on the TRF for instance, you have way too much uptravel. The damper length should be down to 9mm, and the droop should also be adjusted accordingly to get about 3mm uptravel in the front and 2mm in the rear.

The 2mm topdeck is too stiff to be used with the aluminium lower chassis. Florian prefers to run the 1.7mm topdeck on his Tamiya, so I think a thinner topdeck should help the car as well. Before the finals at the ETS, I put 1mm shims underneath the topdeck, and the car was easier and faster to drive.

Overall I would say that the Infinity IF14 is a high quality car kit, but it takes a lot of time and knowledge to sort it out. It has lots of steering, but the setup window is very small. Marc Rheinhard proved that it is a winning car, but if you don’t get the correct setup (like we did), it is extremely difficult to get the full potential out of the car.


Build by David Joos
Thanks to Tonisport
Tonisport is the official Eu importer for Infinity, and you can contact him via www.tonisport.de
setting sheet 2995198939192654503

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