It is time for a fresh 5 THINGS report after an epic weekend of ETS racing at the fantastic HUDY ARENA. We know that (almost) everybody enjoyed the event and we are thankful for each and every person who came to be there with us. The next race of Season #19 will take place at Arena33 in Andernach, GER from September 10-13 and:
ENTRIES FOR ETS RD3 @ ARENA 33 WILL OPEN TONIGHT (Thursday, July 30) AT 20:00 CET ON MYRCM
1.Time flies……also in RC!
Eight years ago , the same drivers finished on the Modified podium
It was the year 2018 when we had the same three guys finishing on the podium at the Hudy Arena. It was Bruno Coelho who was able to win the race for Xray, just a few weeks before he was able to win his first touring car world championship title in South Africa. Alexander Hagberg finished second on the podium and won the 1:12 scale worlds a few weeks later – also in South Africa. For Michal Orlowski, it was his first ever ETS podium and nobody had an idae of how many would follow – especially in the last 3 years when he dominated the ETS.
Fast forward we must admt that these guys have not changed that much. All of them are now counting even more race wins, podiums, and titles, but they are all the same nice guys and we are so happy to have them racing with us. The ETS is made for the best in the business and these three guys belong to the deep core of it! What a great testament to hard work, consistency and dedication to the sport over all these years – amazing!
After this 2018 race, we had another ETS at Hudy Arena2019 before it took us 7 years to finally come back to this amazing facility in Trencin, Slovakia. We really hope that we can put the Hudy Arena back on our ETS calendar for the next season as well.
2. Nobody could “Bet the A-Main”
We have a winner – but nobody won the Jackpot!
For the first time, we played our new little game “Bet the A-Main” which was greated by our Webmaster Oliver Storm. It is “easy to play, but hard to win”. Everybody who simply created an account on our website ets.racing could play the game for free and it will be back for the next round in Andernach as many people liked it. With nearly 200 players taking part, it was already a good success. But what to play for?
It is easy to explain. The challenge is to correctly bet ALL A-Main finalists of the Cayote Modified class in the correct finishing order after the triple A-mains. Sounds easy, but it wasn`t. Nobody was able to win the huge Jackpot (500€ shopping voucher for the ToniSport online shop).
But we have a winner!!! NICO TAMAYO had the best points score (19 out of 33 possible points) and is the winner of a 150€ voucher for the ToniSport shop. Congratulations Nico – you will get contacted by ToniSport soon!
3. ETS is faster than ever before
We compare the runtimes from 2019 and 2026…
We all know that development in RC racing never stops. But sometimes we think, that we have already reached the absolute maximum and that improvements are not possible anymore. As mentioned in topic one of this article, the last race at the Hudy Arena took place in 2019 – seven years ago. We have checked the fastest qualifying runtimes of the modified class to find out about the differences between 2019 and 2026. All the other classes have discovered changes in the rules and it would not be fair to compare these runtimes as things like motors, RPM limiters, or gear ratios have changed.
Back in 2019, Bruno Coelho posted his fastest TQ run (in Q3) with 18 laps 5:17.233 and a hot lap of 17.201 (in Q2). Fast forward to 2026, Michal Orlowski`s fastest TQ run saw 19 laps in 5:12.948 (in Q2) with a fastest qualifiyng lap of 16.174 (in Q3). But what does it mean?
Well, this analysis shows us that the qualifying pace of the TQ driver on track in 2026 was around 20 seconds faster (!) than seven years ago which is massive. The fastest lap in qualifying also improved by a full second which is an improvement of 6% on the hot lap – just INSANE. When we look at the medium time, the gap is even bigger. Bruno`s average lap time in 2019 Q3 was at 17.624 while Michal posted a medium time of 16.470 now in 2026 – also an improvement of 6,5%.
This clearly shows that the development on the chassis, tires, body shells, batteries, and electonice is slightly improving the pace of our cars year by year. And as we had that long break from racing at the Hudy Arena, these results stand out much more and we liked to share them with you!
4. RC PADDOCK – AMAZING STUFF FOR DATA DRIVEN RACERS
David Loppini showed his amazing software to our ETS crew – and some teams are already working with it!
David Loppini from Italy is working as an engineer in Formula 1 and has created a nice platform for us RC racers called RC PADDOCK. David was at the Hudy Arena with his friends from the Infinity team, Bruno Coelho and Francesco Martini. BUt he was also showing his software to many teams and drivers in the pits. Also Patrick Beck from the ETS media team was listening and watching interested when David showed him many of the things you can do and analyze with RC PADDOCK.
Using the slogan: “Analyze, Optimize, Dominate – the future of RC Racing Performance”, David`s tool can be extremly helpful when analyzing your runs on track in practice, or at races. You can compare all the important data run by run for yourself only, or with people you like to share them with. It is gonig very deep into all the important details so we cannot explain all the features here in this report. But it is a fantastic platform for all racers who love to analyze their data and who want to step up their game on track with making the correct setup changes at the right time. With the AI supported RC Paddock, the sky seems to be the limit.
The best: You can sign up for free and use a free three-month trial with all the functions and features to explore RC PADDOCK. Then you can decide if you like to continue the subscription, or even buy the lifetime license. Visit rcpaddock.com and discover it by yourself – it is really cool!
HOT INFO: David will provide us SIX lifetime license codes which we will had over to the SIX champions of ETS Season #19 2026/27 at the ETS season finale!
5. Great canteen, great food, great track, great atmosphere
Hudy Arena delivers the ultimate experience and should be (hopefully) on the 2027 ETS calendar again!
We have mentioned it more than enough in all preview reports leading to ETS Rd2 in the Hudy Arena – this place is just AWESOME. All racers enjoyed to be back in Trencin for an ETS and there was nothing the Hudy family could have done better when it comes to organizing such an event.
We had amazing pits, a great canteen serving very good food all day long (THANK YOU), motivated people in the technical inspection, as well as an amazing racetrack and atmosphere.
THANK YOU HUDY FAMILY AND HUDY ARENA STUFF – YOU HAD BEEN AMAZING!
