Location Nagoya. We were treated to a few sights and sounds before reaching this little gem.
Welcome to Hikotech!
Hikotech has a painted concrete surface that slopes gently. It's rough and I always wanted to visit here because it was one of the first places I noticed the weight shift styles.
Hikotech is home of the Bianca chassis and the bumpy surface and aggressive weight shifting action of the cars means their cars ride height is usually a bit higher. Tetsu joining us for a few runs.
My DRB-REW actually is a similar setup with longer stroke suspension. But the body is so loosely mounted you rarely see the front lift or rear squat. It just scrapes on the tyres. Even so, here, I regularly had scraping due to the undulated surface... Just adding to the theatre.
Anyway, The track is great, with enough diorama and enough flexibility to change regularly.
Long straight, long corners, Uphill and Downhill sections with tight and open sections. Very involving.
David & James Redman and I had done a lot of driving on this tour.
On this day, James was happy to sit back for a while. He handed the Black machine over to Mizunaga-san from Team Tetsujin, which proved to be very lucky for us...
... as he proceeded to give us some schooling on D1 lines and aggressive style.
We were all using the Hikotech Rear Tyre (HDPE) here, and I was trying to a flat front tyre combo.
Flat contact can bring speed and managing that profile can bring great rewards. But I had a little too much front push on this chassis... = Understeer.
It can also to be hard to get the full contact all the time, so 1/2 way through you will see a switch to our regular CR-2 front tyre (pink topline wheels) as I hadn't yet spent enough time on flats to push as hard as I needed too. Rather than fight infinite setup changes for hours, I'd rather learn technique with something I can manage.
So with Mizunaga-san in the lead ... and enjoying the Driftline DL-01
He started cranking it up a level.
We did our best to mimic corner exit, smooth accelleration, aggressive initations and line trace with similar angles.
We had a whole bunch of fun while learning believe me.
After a while, we were on our own with local drivers. Mizunaga-san picked up my camera and I later found some awesome images.
James back behind the wheel and as always on my door.
This shot shows the undulated surface well, highlighting the different ride the cars must endure
The locals had their own unique styles also.
FD looks great here.
Simple and effective coloring will be key to our next team machines...
This MX5 was showing that bit extra RC Addiction.
Hikotech was awesome! But the day wasn't over yet... one more stop.
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