The handsome globetrotting studs from Team AtomicMods have returned from Portugal victorious with yet another world championship title! And except for the minor inconvenience of being constantly mobbed by all the beautiful Portuguese girls, it was a very enjoyable race.

CPRMA in Almada, Portugal was the host of the 2007 PN Racing Mini-Z World Cup Finals. Almada is a beach community in the southeast region of Portugal, about 10 minutes south of Lisbon, the capital city. The event was held at the Almada Forum, a huge shopping center which was voted the best European Mall in 2003.

The track was set up outside on a huge balcony, inside three massive tents which offered protection from the elements to 2 huge RCP tracks and a gigantic control station in between the two. On the far tent, the high speed Formula 1 and Pan car track was set-up. This track was more flowing and a little wider in order to accomodate the slightly larger Mini-Zs. Laptimes were in the high 10 to low 11 second range. On the first tent they had the touring track, a bit tighter and more technical than the previous. The touring track had a huge 37 foot long straightaway and was 30 feet in depth. Laptimes were in the low 12s for the quicker guys, with the occasional high 11 second lap.

This year 6 world titles were up for grabs: 2wd stock, AWD stock, 2wd Modified, AWD modified, Pan Car and Formula 1. The competition level was so intense that there was a different winner for each and every category. This speaks volumes of how far the level of competition has come at this scale. To quote Chad Nelson, a racer that made it all the way from California, "This year, not only does your car have to be perfect to win, you have to be perfect to win."

As usual, 3 rounds of 8 minute qualifiers were run to decide who would get in to battle in the Triple A finals.

Early on, many familiar faces were leading the way. In stock 2wd and modified 2wd Miguel Carvalho was the early pace setter followed closely by Cristian Tabush, Hugo Cruz and Jose Pequito (everyone, with the exception of Tabush, were Portuguese drivers). All of the top four had a chance at the pole. After it had all settled, Pequito took pole for 2wd modified, followed by Tabush and Cruz. In 2wd stock, Tabush took pole followed closely by Miguel Carvalho and Hugo Cruz.

In AWD Stock, Spain's Noe Miralta was in a class of his own. Noe easily set the top qualifying honors from the get go and never looked back.

AWD Modified was a 4 way battle between Uri Valde, Noe Miralta (both from Spain), Cristian Tabush and Hugo Cruz. Every round yielded a different top qualifier and in the end the order was Miralta, Cruz, Tabush and Valde.

For Pan Car, the battle was between David Moret, Noe Miralta and Daniel Rosenmeyer (from Austria). Jacob Feinstein, running the lone TGR Sinister prototype, was running very quick as well but some trouble in qualifying set him back towards the bottom of the A final.

In Formula 1, Rui Barroso and the guys from CRP in Porto, Portugal, were the quickest early on. Chad Nelson from the U.S. managed to sneak up into the top guys securing a good spot on the starting grid.

At the end of qualifying, an announcement was made that the triple A Mains were going to be cancelled. This came as a last minute decision from PN Racing as some Spanish pilots had to leave early due to flight scheduling conflicts. AtomicMods' own Cristian Tabush led a contingency of American and Portuguese drivers to protest the decision, which in turn was reversed.

This did not come without consequence though. As the schedule was shuffled to accomodate the Spanish drivers, the Pan Car category guys were the sacrificial lambs. Ten minutes before the start of the first main, the Pan Car category was announced as the first one to be run, leading several drivers not to have a fully charged battery and dumping before the race was over. Overall, four guys did not finish the first main due to their batteries dying.

Since the order had been reshuffled, first up was Pan Car, followed by 2wd Modified, AWD stock and AWD Modified. Formula 1 and 2wd stock were to be run after the end of the other finals.

In Pan Car the first A main victory went to David Moret, coming all the way from 7th on the grid as he drove a flawless race. The second main saw Jacob Feinstein work his way up to the front at the beginning of the race, only to be run down by Noe Miralta towards the end of the run, giving Noe the win for the second final. The final A-main was an exciting one. Jacob, David and Noe were all capable of taking home the overall win by simply securing the third final. As the run started, David managed to slice through traffic taking over the lead and never looking back. Jacob moved up to second place piloting the TGR, not really being challenged for the position. In the end, after the points had been tallied David took home the title, followed by Noe in second and Jacob in third.

2wd modified was anti-climactic in a sense, as Miguel Carvalho came from 4th on the grid to win the first and second finals in convincing fashion. Second through 4th was up in the air though, with Cruz and Pequito battling every single main all the way through. Cristian Tabush had terrible luck in every single final. Second on the starting grid, he lost the body to his car in the first 2 finals and after leading the first half of the final main, a battery failure led him to drop out of the race. The final standings were, Carvalho, Pequito and Cruz.

AWD stock was the same as qualifying. Noe drove flawlessly beginning to end, winning easily in the first 2 finals. Ismael Pereira finished second with Uri Valde rounding up the podium in third.

AWD modified was a little bit more heavily contested. Noe, Cruz and Tabush battled in the first main for the win. At the end of the first final Noe took home the win. In the second final Hugo returned the favor and barely edged out Noe to take the second final. Cristian had some trouble with traffic early on in the race and limped home in 5th place with a broken car. The 3rd and final A Main would decide the championship for AWD modified. As the buzzer sounded, Hugo rocketed past Noe into the lead building a huge gap over 2nd place Cristian Tabush. Noe and Cristian battled towards the middle of the run for second place but in the end Cristian managed to pull ahead a bit to take second place in the final main. In the end, the final standings were; Hugo Cruz first, Noe Miralta second and Cristian Tabush third.

2wd Stock was sort of like 2wd modified. Cristian shot out of the gates from pole and never looked back. He lapped the field in the first final and would have in the second one as well if he hadn't had a tangle with the second place car when he was coming to lap him. In the third final, Miguel Carvalho took home the win to secure him second overall.

The last world championship decided was Formula 1. The first main went to Pedro Moura, who had to hunt down USA's Chad Nelson the whole race to take the win. In the second main Ricardo Polonia took home the win, with Nelson finishing a close second. The title came down to the last run. Polonia, Nelson and Moura all had a chance to the title. Chad Nelson had bad luck early in the run and fell back in the field. Moura and Polonia battled for most of the race and in the end Moura pulled ahead for the win and overall championship.

What a weekend! Racing was intense and incredibly competitive. Not enough can be said about the organization. CPRMA put on an event that will probably never be matched, or forgotten for that matter. Mini-Z racing has come a long way and it can safely be said that it is here to stay. The Portuguese drivers proved that they are the cream of the crop in Mini-Z at the time, fielding more drivers in the A mains as well as winning the most titles for the year.

Special thanks go out to Carlos Figuereido and Conceiçao for putting on and running such a great event as well as taking such good care of everyone that participated. Hopefully, we'll see you all out next year, wherever it may be.

Rui Eduardo Franco Neiva Barroso	José Carlos Pequito	Eduardo Luis Cunha Cruz
Bruno Ricardo Lascasas Pereira	António Mário Carvalho	Nuno Filipe Carneiro
Pedro Manuel Canastra da Silva	Cecília Diogo Jacinto	Luis Miguel Torreira Fidalgo
Pedro Silva Machado	Ana Carina de Lima Alberto	David José Ribeiro Zurga Pires
Rui Manuel Dias Almeida	Ricardo André Rodrigues Polónia	Pedro Miguel da Cruz Albuquerque
Hugo Miguel Filipe Cruz	Mário João Lemes Queirós	Emanuel Filipe Brito Marques
Pedro José Ramos Sousa Moura	Pedro Miguel Almeida Borges da Silva	Vasco Maldonado Figueiredo
José Miguel Martins Carvalho	José Manuel Feiteira Mata Figueiredo	Diogo Maldonado Figueiredo
António Paiva de Andrada	Nuno Xavier Madureira	Gonçalo Dias Madureira
Pedro Miguel Barroso Mestre	Nuno Alexandre Guerreiro	Óscar do Carmo Viola
Dário Miguel Marcelino	Hélder Gerónimo Silva Gomes	Tiago José Ministro Costa Santos
José Alberto Martins de Carvalho	Pablo Villar Vega	Willy Wong
Leon Braga Santos	Noe Miralta	Robert Rocha
Robert Byrd	Cristian Tabush	Uri Valdé Serratacó
Daniel Rosenmayer	Grant Matsushima	Rod Harris
Enric Centelhas	David Fernandez Costas	Yago Iglesias Mosquera
Alberto Malga Paz	Chad Nelson	David Moret
Alejandro López Martínez	Iñaki Otero Taboada	Ramon Gonzalez Campos
Ismael Rojo Pereira	Mariano Diaz Vazquez	Jacob Feinstein
Jorge Parga Rey	Jorge Manuel Neves da Luz e Silva Arsénio	Bennet Loo

The event organizers really went above and beyond the call of duty. We were greeted at the Lisbon Airport by private busses, which were used all weekend to move us between the hotel, the race, and local restaurants. The busses were driven by XRT members, who went out of their way to help us.

The hotel rooms were a little small, but were fully paid for by the race organizers, so who can complain?

Rob did, however, have to step into the hallway to change his mind.

Rob took a quick dip in the pool to freshen up before heading to the track.

No caption required.

The event was held on the outdoor terrace of the monstrous Almada Shopping Mall. This wing goes farther than you can clearly see, and is one of many just like it.

The mall was not only huge, but beautiful with many interesting architectural features.

This was the view when stepping out onto the terrace. There were 3 large tents that were joined to form a very functional layout.

The business world is very supportive of the racing community in Europe. The mall not only paid XRT to host the race here, but covered some of the expenses as well.

The event planners also did something else unusual and that was to deploy two separate tracks for the different classes. This is the F1 & Pan Car Track on the West end of the venue.

And the "Touring" track where the other classes were run. The red stick with the dustpan attached is used to flip cars over during races without getting onto the track. These were placed at the numbered corner marshal stations.

These signs with the sponsor names were all around the tracks. The XRT racing club really knows how to run a race. A TV station even came out and covered the event.

Rob with Carlos Figueiredo, the Director of XRT which is the world's largest Mini-Z racing club with 165 members.

Say hello to Carlos Conceiçao. He knows something you don't...

Meet Ms. David Wang.

I’m not sure that "Prissy Peach" is the best color for you David. Perhaps "Purple Passion" or "Tantalizing Tangerine" might be better colors on you.

We were given handout motors to ensure everyone was equally matched.

Insert goofy caption of choice here.

A. "Hey baby, how fast are you?"
B. "Say hello to my little friend!"
C. "Rob pays me extra to smile like this!"

They really know how to motivate people in Portugal. If you missed the mandatory drivers meeting, they cut off your trigger finger with a dull pair of pruning shears. Needless to say, it was well attended.

"Did you hear that Rob from AtomicMods.com is here? He’s a hunk of burning love!"

Cristian is not trying to be cool; his thumb is stuck that way from too many hours holding a transmitter. The medical term for the ailment is Transmitterthumbelism, or "T-thumb" for short.

As you can see, Transmitterthumbelism, is a common ailment among world class drivers. There is a procedure that will correct the problem called a Thumbleectemy, but the procedure is quite painful so most simply live with the awkward condition.

This ailment; Minizbodygrowingfromheaditus, is not so common, but much more serious as it severely reduces brain functions. Medical researchers are hard at work, but there is presently no cure.

This ailment seems to afflict only drivers from Spain. David Moret has Transmitterthumbelism, as well as the dreaded Minizbodygrowingfromheaditus. On the bright side, they are able to grow beautifully detailed bodies from their heads, while the rest of us must paint them manually.

This photo was snapped right after we caught Chad sniffing comm. drops.

Luis Barreto and Carlos Conceiçao of the XRT wrote a custom application to run the races that used an SQL database and allowed several people to be logged in making updates at the same time. They had one PC running the race, one handling the transponder sorting, one for entering drivers and 2 more to capture the timing data from the Giro-Z bridges.

When they registered you into the system, they also snapped a webcam headshot of the drivers which was displayed along with your country’s flag along side the race timing information. The driver photos really helped everyone get to know each other.

The race results were also continually displayed on a projector screen, as well as the plasma display.

While the software was custom, standard Giro-Z timing bridges and transponders were used. There were 4 bridges there, one for each track, one at the radio impound for testing the transponders and one spare. The level of preparation and attention to detail was simply astounding!

XRT also had a pretty swell sound setup, with a PA system and a professional Yamaha mixing board for piping sounds from the Giro-Z timing system, the dual announcer’s microphones and even music between races.

Shana is aggressively guarding the radio impound. If you wanted your radio, you had to get through her, and she was pretty tough.

In fact Shana knows a little Portuguese Judo; "judo know if she gotta a gun, judo know if she got a knife?"

Alex, also known as "Maligno", performed inspections. "Maligno" is Spanish for "Evil Man".

The Portuguese drivers make their cars from hard candy so they can eat them in a pinch.

The "Tire Man" who we met at last years World Cup was here again with his ingenious machine for making custom tires. Check out the tire man video here [Small] [Large].

Babes were everywhere!

Oops, never mind.

Cristian in his "hunch of concentration".

And Rob’s version...Wow, just look at that intensity, it’s easy to see why Rob is a world class driver...NOT!

Michael Jackson joined us for a few laps, but we told him to beat it.

David Moret with his beautiful Pan Car body.

Another beautiful body by Noe Miralta. Those Spaniards sure can grow 'em.

Rob likes to build things and he carries a lot of tools to the track, so he built this system to keep it all organized. It all fits into a single OFNA Ultimate Track Bag, which he checks as luggage when flying.

Rob brings a Laptop PC to the track, so he can tweak the settings of his AD Band car and his Helios Radio using the KO PROPO ICS Programming Kit.

On Saturday night after the qualifiers were completed, there was a drivers' dinner at a local restaurant where they bring out meat on a stick and slice off hot pieces directly onto your plate. Around 55 drivers attended.

This is Diego our meat slicing guy. He is a family dentist, but for some reason business is a little slow, so he does this on the weekends for extra cash.

Apparently, "Musical Chairs" is the favorite national pastime of the Portuguese, and here they demonstrate the proper technique. For what it's worth, Rob never could get the hang of it and was always the first one out, allowing him to take the pictures.

Rob, however, had no difficulty with the ladies, and was a babe magnet all weekend. What a stud!

David suspected his computer had a virus and wasn't taking any chances.

Rob hanging with his homie Phillip of PN Racing.

Rob squares up with Miguel for some Wii Boxing. Nintendo. Rob was ranked 4th in his high school boxing league, but then again, it was a small school, and there were only 4 of them.

You can see the video of Miguel getting trounced here.

Being right next to a mall food court, gave the drivers ample opportunity to eat good healthy meals.

"Maligno" shows his true colors.

This is Daniel Rosenmayer and he is from Austria, same as the Governator. He was fairly quiet, but kept mumbling "I'll be back" all weekend, which was a little disconcerting.

The Spaniards pit area; these guys are really messy.

The indomitable Willy Wong who has been racing R/C cars for about a hundred years.

This is how world class drivers do it. Miguel enters a zen-like state before every race to clear his mind... and then we have to wake him up.

Now how does this work again?

This guy takes eye protection seriously. Look at his safety glasses. It's a piece of plastic he is biting to hold it in place.

Now for a peek at the ugly under belly of Mini-Z racing. After a mechanical failure cost him a race, this poor guy cut his wrists with a carbon fiber T-Plate. He was rushed to the hospital just in time, and is now recovering nicely.

They handed out an amazing number of trophies, which were designed by an XRT member.

Even Rob got a teensy tiny trophy, and they gave him a magnifying glass so he could admire it.

This is Bennet Lo, and we are not quite sure what he is doing. We will leave it to you to come up with your own caption for this one.

USA was well represented at the event.

We owe a big thanks to these people. They are the volunteers that made it all happen.

This is the Girl-Z Team, and as far as we know, the world's only all girl Mini-Z racing team. Left to Right, Celia, Cecilia (Celia's Daughter), and Ana.

Jacob took 3rd Place with the new TGR Sinister, which isn't bad considering it is such a new platform and he only drove it a few times before the race. 

Meet the 2007 Mini-Z World Champion drivers. Left to right, David Moret, Miguel Carvalho, Cristian Tabush, Pedro Moura, and Hugo Cruz.

After the event was over, Rob was not only exhausted, but the stick he used to beat the ladies back all weekend was in splinters.

 

We were totally amazed by the quality & organization of this event. Carlos & his team at CPMRA didn't miss a single trick, from the racers photos on the screen, to having hand wipes on the tables. They even gave every driver a bottle of Port wine so we could literally have a taste of Portugal. This was without a doubt the best organized Mini-Z race we have ever attended, and has redefined the standard for Mini-Scale racing. We stayed a few extra days after the race and Portugal had perfect weather, great food, a very rich history and fantastic architecture. Rumor is that next years race will be in Las Vegas, which is cool, but Portugal will be tough to beat.

Article by Robert Byrd & Cristian Tabush
Photography by Robert Byrd & David Moret