The conclusion of the TITC 2025 race meeting saw my SP1 RCmaker chassis qualify in 5th position in the A main and finish in 8th after a hard fought series of finals.

Having arrived in Bangkok to start practice on the 15th a full week before qualifying was due to start I was confident that although I had not driven a touring car in over a decade this would be enough time to get a setup close and then fine tune before the qualifiers.

The RC addict track is beyond unique and has become very well known as one of the hardest tracks to understand. This is because of the many factors, not the least of which is the massive temperature variations in both ambient and surface during the day. Coupled with the world’s best racers being in attendance in all classes leads to an extremely challenging event.

The Ride tires quickly became a challenge to understand, with no belts and a large sidewall they posed a unique setup challenge for all drivers. The SP1 team had an initial setup for TITC however this was based on the Sweep 40 tires and the further I worked on this setup it seemed to just not apply to the Ride tires I was using.

With so long out of the sport it took me far too long to realise that I needed to reduce the mechanical grip being generated by the SP1 and force the tire to do the work. This epiphany occurred on Wednesday morning right before the heavens opened and inundated the track.

I had to go a completely different direction on setup, the car suddenly responded to becoming much more predictable and gaining some much-needed mid exit corner speed. There was still a lack of off-power steering, and this meant that on the high-speed corners I was forced to brake and transfer weight to the front of chassis and allow it to turn into the apex of the corner.

The first controlled practice was a little bit frantic with the 3 fastest consecutive laps giving a position for the qualifiers. I snuck into the B group in position 12, the car was very stable but lacked the “single” lap speed needed for this type of qualifying.

Swapping to the Cayote 6800 ulp batteries gave me more chance to correct the car balance as well as giving consistent power through the 5 minute run for the qualifiers.

The first qualifier had me in position 15 overall after a rookie mistake in which I clipped a dome and roofed the car.

Head down and concentration levels up for the next 2 quals meant that I managed to get the SP1 into position 5 in the a main for the finals.

The finals highlighted my lack of running over the past decade, getting caught up in wrecks with other cars and not running my own race meant that I finished 8th overall for the TITC 2025 race.

A positive result for Team RCmaker and for me and a huge learning curve ticked, the SP1 Impressed throughout the meeting and coupled with ORCA speed controller, Zombie insane 4 bandit motor and Cayote battery power turned out to be a powerful combination.

Massive thanks to the team, with a huge amount of support and knowledge to draw on for the car & setup. Special mention to Ryan Maker, who worked tirelessly on up to 6 different cars and still had time to answer any questions and supply parts to anyone running the SP1.

Thank you Cayote for 6800 batteries and charger, Orca for speedy "WLEB blinky ESC, and Zombie insane 4 17.5 motor.