So why did the RC10 lose at the IFMAR 1987 again?

[TokyoProf]

After their domination at the 85 race, what was the race story for Team Associated losing in 1987?
Do we have closeup pictures of what Team Associated raced with? I see that the MIP RC10 placed 4th below...

1987 IFMAR 1:10 Electric Off-Road World Championships (reference below)

Results 2WD Qual A1 A2 A3 Total
Pos. Driver Car Motor Pos. No. Laps Time Av Time Pos. No. Laps Time Av Time Pos. No. Laps Time Av Time No. Laps Time Total Time Lap
1 United States Joel Johnson Kyosho Ultima Trinity Pure Gold 3 1 16 318.5 19.91 6 15 312.63 20.84 2 15 300.3 20.02 31 618.8 19.96
2 Japan Katsunori Kondo Kyosho Ultima Kyosho Le Mans 240 5 5 15 306.15 20.41 4 15 305.23 20.35 1 16 318.98 19.94 31 624.21 20.14
3 United States Kris Moore Kyosho Ultima Twister 1 2 16 319.96 20.00 10 5 108.95 21.79 4 15 307.75 20.52 31 627.71 20.25
4 United States Mike Christensen MIP RC10 Trinity 7 4 15 302.36 20.16 2 15 300.18 20.01 9 15 318.7 21.25 30 602.54 20.08
5 United Kingdom Jamie Booth Associated RC10 Reedy 4 3 15 301.7 20.11 3 15 303.78 20.25 10 1 19.66 19.66 30 605.48 20.18
6 United Kingdom Kevin Moore Associated RC10 Reedy 8 8 14 302.2 21.59 5 15 311.7 20.78 6 15 312.66 20.84 30 624.36 20.81
7 United States Jay Halsey Associated RC10 Reedy Silver 2 7 14 301.83 21.56 7 15 315.13 21.01 5 15 310.38 20.69 30 635.51 21.18
8 Japan Masami Hirosaka Associated RC10 HPI UNO Blue Label 6 10 9 196.85 21.87 10 15 323.51 21.57 3 15 304.83 20.32 30 628.34 20.94
9 United Kingdom Rory Cull Associated RC10 Reedy 10 6 15 322.50 21.50 8 15 316.83 21.12 8 15 316.60 21.11 30 633.43 21.11
10 United States Eustace Moore MIP RC10 Trinity 9 9 14 303.05 21.65 9 15 318.46 21.23 7 15 314.98 21 30 633.44 21.11

[juicedcoupe]

The better question is what happened to Kyosho after that? The RC10 won three more Worlds, before the B2 was released.

But if you look past Johnson's dominant performance, #2-4 all had similar times.

[TRX-1-3]

Well from what I gathered from another thread of this same topic (can't seem to find it now) contributing factors were:


Very limited practice/tuning window with the track

Track was very rough (concrete filled potholes) with virtually no maintenance during the event.



My thought is it just came down to some advantages that were inherent to the Kyosho cars (suspension geometry, wheelbase, etc.), they had some sort of centrifugal clutch pinion gear setup also (or it was around at the time, not sure if it was on the cars). The Kyosho guys probably turned some OK practice laps, shared and swapped some setups and then got a bit lucky. Track conditions were terrible.

There is a pretty interesting article out there somewhere by Gene Husting (it's linked in the other thread) regarding the event. If you read that, you get the sense that he was pretty bummed out that The Team didn't do as well as they could have. Which is understandable.

Edit: found that other thread on the topic!

https://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?t=48454

[coxbros1]

Honestly i have studied it for decades..I think it came down to the "Pure Gold"....perfect power/torque delivery on that track...the 240spa had too much power

[Coelacanth]

The race was won by better cars and drivers.

Maybe the track should have been designed specifically to benefit the RC10?

[Frankentruck]

Maybe the Kyosho drivers watched the Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary Pumping Iron and took notes on how to treat the other competitors the night before the race.

[duckhead]

A couple thoughts...

1. Joel's Ultima was extremely modified from a stock Ultima.
2. Joel is an exceptional driver (ever notice how a lot World champs of that era were on-road specialists?)

But the major reason was in essence, tires. The Kyosho team had a superior tire for the event.

This would be largely what started the "tire wars" for many Worlds after that (like '89).

It is also interesting to note that this is one of the reasons spec tires are used now.


-Mark

[duckhead]

The better question is what happened to Kyosho after that? The RC10 won three more Worlds, before the B2 was released.

But if you look past Johnson's dominant performance, #2-4 all had similar times.

"The RC10" being used loosely here, at least for '89 and '91

[juicedcoupe]

"The RC10" being used loosely here, at least for '89 and '91

Well, there wasn't any "loose" usage in 1993.

Just saying. The RC10 was still getting it done, several years later. The Ultama, well wasn't.

If the Ultama were truly the better car, it would have maintained its dominance. It didn't. They just had a good day.

If you remember, 1987 was a busy year for Team Associated. 86-87 would have been the move to the new address.

[Retro rc]

Honestly i have studied it for decades..I think it came down to the "Pure Gold"....perfect power/torque delivery on that track...the 240spa had too much power

There was no kyosho motor in that ultima it was pure trinity power. Joel himself put it down to the total package especially the tires that no one else had at the time.

And associated learned from kyosho by running specifically designed buggies at the next 2 worlds. Just a shame they didn’t do production runs of them.

[coxbros1]

Honestly i have studied it for decades..I think it came down to the "Pure Gold"....perfect power/torque delivery on that track...the 240spa had too much power

There was no kyosho motor in that ultima it was pure trinity power. Joel himself put it down to the total package especially the tires that no one else had at the time.

And associated learned from kyosho by running specifically designed buggies at the next 2 worlds. Just a shame they didn’t do production runs of them.

I know, 2nd place had the 240spa I think.

[TokyoProf]

So after reading the previous post on the topic, my sense is that...

1) Team Associated was not innovating but selling (who could blame them) to sell as many kits as possible after 85. And, as was mentioned they were moving to a new address.
2) Kyosho out-engineered them (after bringing home and studying the RC10 of course), and with Joel Johnson running at race circuits both in the US and Japan, he was an obvious driver choice to sponsor.
3) The Ultima design was special, maybe this is not spoken about enough (even by Kyosho). Was the JJ Ultima winner special in any engineering sense? Side note but 1980s was the height of Japan's wealth as a nation. The whole state of California was worth less than the Imperial Palace in Tokyo in the 80s lol. The Japanese RC companies had the money to throw at everything. They had so many RC companies at the time!
4) I'm still unclear about what was unique about the MIP RC10 buggy that placed 4th. Also, seems like Jamie Booth could tell us a lot about how his basic RC10 fared at the race.

[TRX-1-3]

4) I'm still unclear about what was unique about the MIP RC10 buggy that placed 4th. Also, seems like Jamie Booth could tell us a lot about how his basic RC10 fared at the race.

I think some of the uniqueness is that MIP was about the only 4wd effort on the 2wd RC10 platform. From the reading, Associated had zero time or interest in a ground-up 4wd offering as they were having a bit of a struggle in producing enough RC10's to meet the market demand. Hirosaka ran the CAT, and the other AE drivers went with the Yokomos due to their simple (relative) layout and ease of tuning and maintenance. The other manufacturers had more history producing dedicated 4wd vehicles. So, to have the MIP shop bring their humble yet ingenious setup and place 4th was pretty unique.

[HS-YZ250]

"The RC10" being used loosely here, at least for '89 and '91

Well, there wasn't any "loose" usage in 1993.

Just saying. The RC10 was still getting it done, several years later. The Ultima, well wasn't.

If the Ultama were truly the better car, it would have maintained its dominance. It didn't. They just had a good day.

If you remember, 1987 was a busy year for Team Associated. 86-87 would have been the move to the new address.

I think some of it has to do with the types of companies Associated and Kyosho were back then, and now, even.

I got into it with a couple of people that bad-mouthed Losi over their choice to make the JRX* re-releases in 1/16. They usually point to Kyosho and Tamiya as "how to do it right". But I'm pretty confident in saying that the only similarity between Losi/Associated and Kyosho/Tamiya, particularly in the 80's and 90's, was that they sold RC cars.

Kyosho and Tamiya, from what I can tell, are substantially bigger companies with manufacturing assets, diverse products, and all the corporate accounting and bureaucracy that comes with that. Management oversight means new product development can take a considerable amount of time and often ends up a bit political as it has to bear scrutiny from the executives who are used to being in control and can derail a project at any time. Unless the company makes a pointed effort to keep the racing program independent of the main business (see today's Team Losi and TLR Racing, and, really, any "factory racing team" in real world racing). I'm willing to bet that, back in the 80's and 90's, where Kyosho and Tamiya were global manufacturing corporations with millions in capital equipment for molding, tool makers, machine shop, and (important for easy re-releases) tool storage. Meanwhile, Associated and Losi were small mom-n-pop operations that had, at best, a Pack-and-Finish line. I'd wager the molds to make their cars never set foot in their building and were scrapped shortly after they changed the part and stopped running it.

What I'm getting at is small operations like Losi and Associated in the 80's and 90's probably operated very lean and had few decision makers that were very invested in racing and were easily able to make lots changes to evolve their cars fairly easily, where Kyosho and Tamiya are bigger corporate entities where, while having the resources to field a great platform, the designers would have had to convince management, who probably came from the scale model side of business that ran the same product for decades, that the buggy they just sunk a couple million into tooling needed a bunch of new tooling each year to keep on top of the competition.

[Coelacanth]

A couple thoughts...

1. Joel's Ultima was extremely modified from a stock Ultima.

I don't think this is relevant. You can bet every RC10 in this race wasn't stock, either. Who would be racing a bone-stock car??

2. Joel is an exceptional driver

No doubt about that, winning is a combination of car and driver. The car is the particular sum of all parts and setup for one particular track, that includes tires of course, but I think the tires being a factor is probably not too significant. Were all the Ultimas finishing ahead of RC10's equipped with the same tires? Just asking because I honestly don't know, but I doubt it was a major factor. Only one item in a sum-of-all-parts.

This topic seems to pop up from time to time on this forum and not surprisingly, there always seems to be an undertone to discredit the Ultima wins, or they didn't deserve to dethrone the RC10 for whatever reason or excuse. The wins and placements WERE valid and legitimate, as they were for previous and later years. I think the main takeaway is that the RC10 deservedly earned a winning reputation and maintained it for years, but maybe rested on their laurels a bit, took their eye off the proverbial ball for a bit, and were surprised in this particular year.

That doesn't mean the RC10 was bad, and it also doesn't mean the Ultima didn't deserve the wins. Even the best-behaved child can get a spanking.