Volker tops timed practice
Ronald Volker has topped practice for the opening round of the 2011/12 Yokomo Euro Touring Series, the reigning champion improving on his earlier pace set in the second timed practice to be seeded no.1 for qualifying. The Yokomo driver improved his average for three consecutive laps by 1/10 of a second to end practice in Muelheim-Kaerlich over 2/10th faster than Xray’s Alexander Hagberg with Tamiya’s Marc Rheinard dropping a spot to third.
Not featuring at the sharp end of the time sheets after first timed practice Japanese ace Naoto Matsukura found a chunk of time to set the fourth fastest time ahead of his Yokomo team-mate Yannic Prümper who also improved. Suffering from oversteer in TP1 the back to back 1:12 World Champion changed his suspension set-up and oil for the final practice. While much better, the 18-year-old said his BD5 WXi went to having a little understeer and he was now working on a set-up that would give him steering somewhere inbetween.
Factory Kyosho driver Christopher Krapp completed the top 6 ahead of TRF driver Viktor Wilck. Although shown at the top of the timesheets due to short lap after he missed a section of track when he rolled his TRF417x in TP1, on manual correction of the lap he ends practice classified 7th ahead of France’s Loic Jasmin.
In the Xray Pro Stock class, Slovakian Zdenko Kunák set the pace for Xray when he was the only driver to record a 13 second lap average. Fastest in the first timed practice Oliver Franke improved on his time but ended up second just ahead of champion Martin Hofer and winner of the last season’s finale Ivan Laptev.
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