Volker sets early pace in Poznan
Defending Champion Ronald Volker is the early pace setter at the fourth round of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series in Poznan, Poland, with the German topping the time sheets ahead of Marc Rheinard in the first timed round of practice while championship leader Christopher Krapp hit problems ending up only 21st fastest. Running as part of the Motorshow Poznan, which is set to attract almost 50,000 visitors when it officially opens its doors to the public tomorrow morning, the host club have made full use of Hall 6 at the international exhibition venue to create a huge indoor track for the final carpet race of the 2011/12 season of ETS.
Volker said his Yokomo BD5 lacked a little steering but otherwise felt good and was easy to drive in particular through the triple chicane where he felt he was able to make up most of his time advantage over his rivals. Unfortunately for the European Champion a large number of crashes through the challenging section has forced race director Scotty Ernst to change the layout to a double chicane due to concerns of damage being caused to the carpet. With many drivers struggling to make the chicane, the body posts of the overturned cars sliding across the carpet has result already in some rips and so as to protect it from any further damage the chicane was modified after the penultimate practice giving all the drivers one practice run to adjust to the change ahead of this evening’s opening qualifier. Volker said making the chicane less challenging would close things up at the front but he understood and backed the decision to make the change.
Rheinard was surprisingly upbeat about the early performance of his Tamiya ending up just 2/10th off Volker over their fastest three consecutive laps. He said while his car felt ‘lazy’ to drive the lap times were OK and he will continue with the same set-up for the final practice and just fit one of his allocated sets of Ride race tyres to scrub them in for qualifying.
Causing a bit of a surprise on the time sheets was Swede Magnus Vässmar who took his Xray to the third fastest time. The 25-year-old who joined the Xray team at the end of last season was modest about his performance describing it as OK but added as the grip starts to come up on the fresh carpet his T3 2012 is starting to get a little twitchy to drive. Planning to change his tyre prep for the final practice he like many drivers is glad to see the chicane change saying it was very tricky to get right every time.
Having secured his best ever ETS finish at Round 3 in Gran Canaria, team-mate Alexander Hagberg is not enjoying a good start to his event finding himself 31st on the time sheets. Although he didn’t complete the full practice run due to losing a drive shaft pin, the Swede said his head just stopped working this morning and he hopes the track change might help him get it back into gear.
Christopher Krapp is another who hopes he can turn things around this evening in Poland. In the opening practice the German suffered with a broken sensor wire and missed out on the 5-minutes of valuable track time. Although he ran the second practice ok, in the first timed practice his Kyosho struggled on fresh tyres resulting in a crash through the chicane with resulted in a broken rear arm. Asked about his goal this weekend, the 19-year-old said racing back indoors he needs to be realistic about his chances admitting a Top 3 finishing was going to be a tall order. Setting his goal on first securing himself a place in the A-Main he said that was the approach he took at Round 1 in Koblenz and the end result was a podium finish.
A change of chassis helped Eric Dankel to find his rhythm in the first timed practice after he struggled in the morning’s two untimed practice rounds. Running a new chassis in the morning the Yokomo team driver could not get any feeling with the car and so reverted to a chassis he last ran at the Italian round of the ETS earlier this year where he made the A-Main. Describing it as ‘super easy’ to drive the former multiple ETS Pro Stock race winner said he will leave the set-up as is and concentrate on his driving and adapting to the track change. A fan of the first chicane he said it was better for everyone that they did decided to change it.
Completing the Top 6 was Xray Pro-Stock title contender Zdenko Kunák and factory Awesomatix driver Freddy Südhoff. The Russian designed Awesomatix continues to grow in popularity with 16 of the A700 chassis competing here this weekend. Elsewhere Team Yokomo’s Yannic Prumper, one of the drivers expected to mount a challenge for a win here this weekend, has unfortunately fallen ill and has decided to return home to Germany.
In the Xray Pro-Stock class, HB driver Oliver Franke set the pace from Kunák and up & coming Polish talent Michal Orlowski. Franke said a shock rebuild for the first timed practice helped a lot with the car working a lot better when the shocks were full of oil rather than air. Also racing in the Ride Modified class, Franke said he does not believe the track change will effect the Pro-Stock cars as much as Modified and so is not too concerned it will change much at the top of the time sheets.
View the complete results here.
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