Tamiya TRF421 Eastbourne KOC Race report and setting sheet

The highly anticipated TRF421 is pretty much now available everywhere across the globe

Some drivers in the UK have received theirs and eagerly started building. TheRCracer team was certainly no exception

Time was of the essence, the kit arrived Tuesday and a couple of long nights allowed me to have the kit built and in race trim

I am currently competing in the King of Clubs RC Series . So far, I've had some decent results using the 420X. The next round of the championship is the perfect place to debut the car

Eastbourne is an excellent track, it was super clean with newly reprofiled kerbs, new fencing and plenty of grip! It's also certainly a tricky track where local knowledge is key. I felt comfortable with it at the end, just a shame it's 3.5hrs away from Bristol!

Round 3: Eastbourne 

This race event doesn't follow the convention of only racing on the Sunday. It was a more relaxed affair with 3 rounds of practice on Saturday morning, 3 rounds of qualifying and a single final. Sunday would see Saturday's qualifying results carry over (best 3/6) and 3 leg finals. A decent amount of track time over 2 days 

I made sure I arrived early on Saturday to setup and hit the ground running. Unfortunately, the dry weather was only booked for Sunday, so rounds 1&2 were very damp. 

Practice 3 was dry and the perfect chance to try the car. It felt great from the first lap! The initial feel was that it was wanting to corner flat with minimal roll. Direction change was good.

The car was turning decent lap times, so decided to change to split top decks. This has made my 420X faster indoors and outdoors. Unfortunately, this made the car hard to drive for Q1 but good enough for 4th 

Q2, I put the fixed top deck back on and added the thicker roll bar to the front. This transformed the car. It was very agile and had lots of steering. I managed to scrape a 20 lap run so was very pleased

Q3 didn't work out for me. I had a body tuck riding a kerb and was taken out. 

With my results, I managed to qualify 4th overall. 

For the final, the car stalled on the line. I had noticed this all day, but was fine when I started moving. This dropped me back and I was wiped out to last. A recovery drive followed and managed to come home in 5th place

Sunday felt like a better day. I put on new tyres and changed additive prep for the qualifying runs. Not much to say as the car went well with the changes I made. Round 6 was my fastest time. I put new tyres on to scrub them in for the finals but they actually went great from the start. I ended up with the 2nd fastest time in that round!

The finals were good for me. A solid 4th in final 1 was a good start. A messy final 2 occured with many places changing, but ended up 4th again.

Final 3 was a good run with car 5 who hassled me all 5 minutes. Unfortunately for me, he made a late dive at the end of the straight for which I had no way to defend. I finished 5th

Overall, I finished 5th overall. The car was immediately on the pace which filled me with confidence. At the previous rounds, I've been nearer the back of the A final, I was comfortably at the sharp end this weekend. Eastbourne is a track where the locals race every week, they know how to make the tyres work and what lines are fastest. To hit 20 lap runs in 4/6 runs shows the pace of the car

Here is the set-up I currently use, there is still a lot of experimentation I want to do, especially with Anti Dive and Anti Squat. 

The big takeaway for me was the way that the TRF421 was on the pace from it's first outing. The car is so flat and quick in the corners, but still very easy to drive.. I cannot wait for my next race.