The first day of the Worlds started with the sun rising over the mountains in the east - a good sign that you could actually see the sun given the generally poor weather in the past few days, and overcast skies the previous day.

Sunday consists mainly of 2WD driver registration and the opening ceremony. Most drivers arrived for around 9am and a long slow-moving queue formed to aquire the photo ID passes, since without a pass a very burly security guard (see below right) would not let you into the pitting area.

Other than registering which most people did early in the morning - there isn't too much to do other than glue practice tyres and wait for the opening ceremony which got underway a little after 3pm.

Right: The AE team leave the hotel in a four-van convoy

Team Associated have the strongest 2WD team at the World Championships - which isn't a surprise. There seems to be zero change with the car - just the same winning formula.

Kyosho are here in force as you'd expect and had some new things to show on their latest 2WD chassis, the RB5. New shock bodies reduce the length of the shocks at the rear by 4mm and the rear shock tower is likewise lower to give the same ride height. The shock bodies are now specially coated to reduce friction.

XFactory didn't show up despite at least three of their drivers being on the drivers list. The X6 at least will be here in the hands of a few different teams that don't have their own 2WD chassis. Some Hot Bodies drivers and Tamiya drivers have the cars.

A handful of Losi cars are running but with no 'official' support from Losi it seems to have a big impact on their numbers.

Atomic Carbon have two of their S2 mid-motor cars here - one in the hands of UK driver Dave Church, and the other in the hands of Frederic Pain from France, who is borrowing the car just for this event.

The opening ceremony wasn't quite as grand as the one at the European Championships a few weeks previously, but it was a chance to see the various teams all assembled together at least. Team Japan was the largest as you'd expect, followed by the USA and surprisingly the Australian team was the third largest with ten drivers.

A short concours competition took place after the opening ceremony and all the drivers were asked to place their cars down on the grass behind the drivers stand. The eventual winner was Omi Takahiro from Japan with his Kyosho RB5.

The track was still being worked on during sunday and with the glorious weather helping to dry out the clay it was looking like the track would be in fine condition for the start of practice on day two. The sun went away around 3pm and stayed away - replaced by ever increasing cloud. A light shower put a dampner on things but it was around 5pm when we were on our way back to Komatsu that there was a real downpour.
Drainage should be OK with the track being on an incline, but it remains to be seen just how wet some parts will remain.