You Can Race a Tamiya! Micc Rnd1 TA08 pro race report and Setting
There is no real surprise for anyone who visits this site, that the Tamiya addiction is strong. The allure of blue bling and the fun of raci...
There is no real surprise for anyone who visits this site, that the Tamiya addiction is strong. The allure of blue bling and the fun of racing something with a plastic tub..
So recently in the world of online video dickery the click bait titles have been slowly ramping up. Personally, most of these videos pass me by as I'm more interested in videos where experts give advice as opposed to people trying to create a cult of personality. However there seemed to be a theme coming out stating that you cannot race a Tamiya..
As much as I tried to avoid it, it grinded my gears as I've spent roughly the last decade or so advocating the opposite, actually contributing to help others race their Tamiya's. So with this in mind I thought I would approach the excellent MICC a little bit differently. I am booked into two events so I have decided to run two 'off the shelf' Tamiya race chassis at the event. Following the logic that you cannot race Tamiya's.. if I'm not last I will have at least proved the theory incorrect.. A result in common sense, and also a great way for me to enjoy the excellent MICC event without the added pressure to perform that I would set myself when running my TRF421..
I know that doesn't sound me sound very competitive, but life away from the race track has been hectic for the last year or so, and it all started to get a little too much. Putting undue pressure on me to perform at a large race event wasn't appealing, and I considered skipping it. So having a small reset, and focusing on the joy of tinkering with a 'Toy' Tamiya whist catching up with my race buddies seemed much more appealing.
So for the first part of this challenge I decided to use the TA08 Pro. This is not my hopped up version that was used for my initial review. Instead this is one that I picked up second hand to develop some parts for (when I get time). The intention is to show that an off the shelf 'Stock' Tamiya would cope at a track, with just a few select options.
For anyone that has a keen eye, you can see that it does have a couple of additions. It has the Tamiya 22004 Aluminium Servo mount, this is because I had a spare hanging around. It offers a tasty bit of bling, but not any real noticeable performance benefit. The other, more performance based Hop-up is the 22003 Stabilizer set. Again I had the parts to actually fit on the car, if it was low grip, I might not even have been bothered, but for a very high grip event as MICC it would put me at a massive disadvantage to not run them.
So.. How did it go?
Well Practice was ok, the grip was the lowest it would be on the circuit and the TA08 felt pretty good straight from start. It has been a while since I raced at the MICC (2023 was cancelled), so I used the 3 minutes to try to get my eye in.. Importantly the car went where I pointed it so that was all I needed to know.
The first qualifier started and the car was ok, but to be honest I was struggling with a couple of hairpins.. I didn't feel confident in the car.. this was still in part down to learning the track and to get to grips with the car. It must be remembered that this TA08 was essentially stock. So this means I was running a differential in the front instead of a spool took a little time to get used to. I was soon picking up the pace, but at some point the car totally span out at one of the corners.. It was as if I had lost signal. I started again and I continued until the end of the session.. I checked the results and I had only registered a few laps..
Once I removed the body, it was clear to see what had happened. The fan had come loose in the car. It was attached via double sided tape on the chassis. I can only assume the flex was so great that it became unstuck.. anyway it would have been flapping around until one point when I would have driven over it and caused the spin.. pulling the other wires etc. The fan was AWOL so I had to find a replacement, also I was lucky because a fellow racer had a spare clamp, so I could mount the motor away from the chassis..
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The stock chassis is so flexible.. It's almost like a crawler.. |
Anticipating the grip getting higher for round two, I was interested to see how the car would cope. As I mentioned in my original review, the TA08 Pro is a very soft car, which can be a big advantage in low grip conditions (And in the wet), yet on high grip carpet it's not necessarily a trait you would choose to have on the car.
The car was surprisingly good.. I was not the quickest car in my heat but it was also not the slowest, on the chicane the car was agile and it looked nice and flat. On the high speed sweeper it also stayed quite level, however on the quicker hairpins it did seem to lift on the apex. Unfortunately I was hit a couple of times, both resulting in me ending up on my roof.. compromising my time massively.
I moved the roll centres higher for Q3. For the rear I removed the shim below the upper arms, for the front I added 0,5mm under the FR suspension blocks. This raised the front roll centre and also gave me some anti-dive. Whilst I wouldn't normally do this, there were a few other factors. I also moved the front lower arms 2mm forward. I wanted to slightly lengthen the wheelbase. This increases the caster so the anti-dive will help lessen the amount of extra caster..
With this set-up the car felt good in Q3.. The car would still at points tie itself in knots on some of the corners as the chassis was twisting so much, however on the faster hairpins is was much calmer so I could push more. I was starting to get a lot more confident.... I was pushing the car a bit too much and on the infield I rode a kerb too quickly and ended up on my roof.. As we had 12 cars in a heat I had to wait a good while for the marshals to place me back on my wheels after my mistake. That put me on a really difficult path to post a representative time of the cars pace. I just drove the car and pushed a little harder on every lap to see how it would cope, and hoped I could use that knowledge in the final qualifier to post a better time.
The final qualifier had arrived, I had to post a clean time to try to move up the grid. I removed the shims on the steering arms to change the steering Ackermann. I had previously added some to compensate for the extended wheelbase. I removed them to give me a smoother cornering feel. I also added shims on the wheel hex's to widen the car.
The car was good. In fact I was able to push it harder and faster than before.. I was surprised on how well it was handling the high grip, despite the car literally raising a wheel at some corners because of the flex. (According to some spectators it was a site to behold).. I posted my qualifier and managed a decent time.
For my final I ended up near the back of the grid. This is always good fun as you can only try to go higher.. and as we all launched off the line things went very well for me indeed. I made up several places by the end of the first lap because of the inevitable first lap incidents that can happen.. I also used my new found confidence in the car to be aggressive and send it into some corners, getting to the apex quickly and swiping the car around and launching out from the corner.
![]() The Tamiya TA08 pro and ZooRacing Goat performed well together. |
Once I settled into my groove I was really enjoying the race. I was getting into some good battles and was slowly making my way up the field. The grip was now at it's highest point and I could see that the car was lifting a little more on some of the tighter hairpins, especially if I was pushing hard on the inside. One time I ended up on two wheels racing towards the chicane section 😁 This unsettled me a little and I had to start to dial back on some of the corners. It still didn't affect my progress, however I had a coming together with a passed car and it left me stranded in the centre of the track for a while and I watched on helplessly as the other cars I had earlier passed just moved on by.. Once I was placed down on the track I still managed a couple of passes and had made up 3 places from my starting position, but I could have probably finished six or seven places higher.
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Thanks to Robert Clark for the race photos |
Overall it was an eventful day out. I thoroughly enjoyed myself running the Tamiya TA08 pro. I was a little concerned at first that I had made a silly move to choose this over my race prepped TRF, but the car was surprisingly good at the track. MICC is one of the worst case scenarios for the TA08, because of the grip. Despite this, the chassis handled it well, and if I had not come into the event blind with this TA08, and had driven it at a local club night before it's first run out at MICC, I would have been in an even better position to have realised it's potential.
Looking at the lap times and averages in the finals, I was please to see that my consistency was only matched by one other driver in the final (Two tenths between fastest lap and the average 10). This shows that the car was in a pretty good place from a set-up point of view. I also could have geared it more aggressively to match some of the other drivers, but I was a little too cautious at putting in some solid qualifiers.
Importantly, I wasn't languishing around the bottom of the field, and the car was not hitting a glass ceiling on performance. This 'Stock' TA08 was able to battle with all of the latest and greatest carbon fibre chassis cars out there. Is it going to be as ultimately quick as a Top of the range £700 kit.. no.. but unless you are able to have clean races and qualifiers the difference is going to be much closer than you think. So the question is.. what should I race in the next round? I think we all know it has to be a TT02 😎
Here is my final set-up.
Yes! TT-02 - love it. But how low/vanilla can you go?
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