Volker forced to withdraw from Gran Canaria finals
Reigning Champion Ronald Volker has been forced to withdraw from the finals of the third round of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series in Gran Canaria after his last remaining prototype LRP speedo shutdown during this morning’s practice final. Having dominated the opening two rounds of this season’s series, the German ace has endured a tough event on the Spanish island including destroying his spare car on Wednesday when a speedo failure resulted in the car failing to stop at the end of the main straight. Arriving at the event with five speedos, the factory Yokomo driver suffered four failures in pre-event testing forcing the Yokomo team to request extra units from LRP on Thursday. Unfortunately due to the location of the race the earliest a shipment could be landed was Monday leaving Volker no option but to pack up before the event had official started or use a speedo from a different manufacturer to at least get through qualifying.
Fitted with a Speed Passion speedo for official practice and the five rounds of qualifying, Volker secured third on the grid for the A-Main. However, due to contractual obligations the last remaining LRP speedo had to be fitted to the car for the final day of the event and in a heartbreaking moment for the entire Yokomo team, in particular Yukijiro Umino who traveled from Japan to engineer their star driver’s BD5WX, the German ace’s car shutdown after just 2 minutes of running in the practice final. Out of speedos, Yokomo team manager Robert Itoh informed race director Scotty Ernst that Volker would take no further part in the event.
With 3rd on the grid empty, this will give Kyosho’s Christopher Krapp, who makes his first start from pole position, and No.2 car of Team Xray’s Alexander Hagberg some extra breathing space as they both seek to lay claim to their first ever ETS victory.
