Marcin Maliński has won the VRC Worlds Open Class nitro buggy title. The 25 year old Polish Team Serpent racer was the big surprise in the A-Main final as he did not compete in 2014, had no ranking and set an incredible pace right from the start of the Worlds, giving hot favorite David Ronnefalk a hard time!

But his 3^rd place in the 2013 VRC Worlds 1:8 nitro buggies should have been a warning to all! His pace was so fast that there was a lot of gossip about him cheating the system. Even his result in the 60 minute A-Main was disputed 5 times by other racers which lead to automatic disqualification. After investigation of these protests the race director reversed the disqualification which means that the young Pole has earned his first official VRC World title. Fresh HB team driver David Ronnefalk finished 2^nd 13 seconds behind Malinski, and the other Swede and winner of the 2014 Season 3 series Tobias Isaksson came in 3^rd another 10 seconds back, the top-3 scoring an incredible fast 96 laps at the difficult Naxos Worlds track in Sicily.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkI7hB7UA3o[/youtube]

The A-Main was very much a 2 horse race between Malinski and Ronnefalk, with Isakson in the waiting seat just a few seconds back waiting for the front runners to make mistakes. There were plenty, by everyone. Naxos is a very tricky track, something that was already experienced during the real IFMAR Worlds late September of this year. Ronnefalk was the early leader, Malinski controlled mid race with Ronnefalk fighting back lap after lap. With 6 minutes to go the Swede had hunted Malinski down once more and took a 1 second lead after the last pit stops. Ronnefalk made a series of very unusual mistakes though, 4 in a row costing him 14 seconds and the VRC Worlds title. Malinski kept his cool all the way till the finish line to become the next VRC World Champion 1:8 nitro buggies Open class.

2014 VRC Worlds Buggy Open Class A-Main

1             MARCIN MALIŃSKI        PL           Pro         96           60:13.626

2             David Ronnefalk              SE           Pro         96           60:26.603

3             Tobias Isaksson                SE           Pro         96           60:36.494

4             Markku Honkanen         FI            Pro         93           60:03.837

5             Fredrik Boden                  SE           Pro         93           60:08.997

6             Björn Engman                   SE           Pro         93           60:20.351

7             James Le Pavoux             GB          Sport     93           60:35.749

8             Marvin Fritschler             DE          Pro         91           60:02.645

9            Nicolas Loriot                    FR           Pro         DNS

10          Anthony Bruyer               FR           Pro         DNS

NATIONS CUP

With 4 Swedes in the Open Class A-Main it is no surprise that Sweden came out on top with a huge margin over France in second and Germany in third. So European countries dominated the 2014 VRC Worlds with the absence of a strong contingent of US and Asian racers. From Europe the UK (7^th), Italy (14^th) and Spain (16^th) disappointed. Hopefully we will see a stronger representation from these countries in 2015.

1. Sweden          712         D. Ronnefalk (1.), T. Isaksson (2.), F. Boden (4.), B. Engman (5.), R. Bagger (16.)
2. France             461         N. Loriot (9.), A. Bruyer (10.), T. NUZZACI (15.), Q. Le Gall (17.), J. Ribeiro (19.)
3. Germany        383         M. Fritschler (7.), M. Krüger (18.), L. Kruger (38.), Y. Grieger (44.), M. Dirks (46.)