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Novarossi's driver lineup for 2015 finalized - maybe?

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Aaron Waldron

0 Feb. 26, 2015, 7:14 a.m.

Main Photo: Novarossi's driver lineup for 2015 finalized - maybe?

By Aaron Waldron

LiveRC.com

From Novarossi:

www.novarossi.it

Novarossi recently published their 2015 team driver lists for both off-road and on-road, raising a few questions about the difference between this one and the version posted by www.Buggy-Sport.info.

Here's Buggy-Sport's version:

The first items that one might notice are that Ronda Drake has joined REX USA; Yannick Aigoin, who ran Ultimate-branded Novarossi engines last year, will be running Ultimate-branded TOP engines in 2015; Surikarn Chaidajsuriya, who recently signed with Serpent for off-road and touring car, will run Novarossi engines in off-road; and former World Champion Robert Batlle, who just two weeks ago famously split from Novarossi after five years, will continue running the Italian engines under the "Ultimate" brand.

Except for, well, it seems there are two versions of the list - and I haven't been able to find this one that Buggy Sport posted. The list that Novarossi just posted on their Facebook page via this caption -

Post by Novarossi World.

- is quite a bit different. Most notably, Batlle is missing.

Eight drivers not included on the Buggy-Sport version (Mattia Polito, Vitor Sousa, Ricardo Abreu, Pedro Sousa, Nuno Rebelo, Fernando Almeida, Denis Lopes, and Antonio Peixe) are included in the version of the list linked from Novarossi's Facebook comment. Aside from young Italian racer Polito, the other seven all represent Portuguese distributor HobbyImport.

And while it's perfectly possible that it's simply a weird bit of oversight, or that I'm looking in the wrong place entirely, it's interesting that Batlle is the ONLY driver on the Buggy-Sport version of the list that's not included in the other.

As for the on-road side, Singaporean driver Nicholas Lee will be flying the REX USA colors.