Yokomo 1-2 in final practice
Team Yokomo claimed a 1-2 in practice at Round 5 of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series, with Yannic Prumper moving up to second fastest in the final practice in Luxembourg behind Ronald Volker. Having completely outclassed his rivals in TP1, Volker would again be fastest in the second & final seeding practice albeit in a slow time, his advantage only 4/10ths rather than the over 1-second advantage he had over 3-laps in the previous run. Improving his time by a 10th of a second, Prumper would move ahead of Tamiya’s Viktor Wilck who again ran a 57.5 pace the second time being just fractionally slower. On the timing sheets the second best improvement came from French driver Loic Jasmin, who jumped from 10th to 4th fastest demoting fellow countryman Lucas Urbain to fifth.
Volker said while he didn’t have the same ‘crazy pace’ as he had at the start of TP1, his LRP powered BD7 was overall pretty much the same with it feeling very consistent over the 4-minutes. The only driver to run an 18-second lap in TP2, he said he is happy to leave the car as is for the opening qualifier, for which he will be the top seed, even though the track conditions should be a lot cooler than those of both rounds of timed practice.
Despite improving his time, Prumper said he is still struggling at the start of the run with his best time coming from his final three laps. Lost for ideas on what to change for TP2, he copied a set-up from Volker’s car reducing the spacer under the rear bulk head by 1mm. Making the car roll more his mechanic Toni Rheinard said it didn’t suit his driving style and for Q1 they will revert back changing instead to a softer shock oil and droop adjustment with the aim just to get in a solid first qualifier.
Having changed the shock set-up on his TRF418, Wilck said while it gave the car a slightly different feel in terms of lap times it was almost identical to earlier. The Swede plans to play safe for Q1 saying he will leave the car as is for now. The third quickest driver to improve in the final practice, team-mate Marc Rheinard said reverting back to his free practice set-up improved his MuchMore powered TRF418 but tyre quality was an issue. Cutting open his pre-glued tyres after the run in which he posted the 7th fastest overall time, the German, who has come in for criticism over complaining about tyres, found that parts of the inserts had become glued to the rim something which Wilck described as causing a similar feeling to driving a real car with a puncture. The 3-time World Champion said hopefully the gluing of the tyres for qualifying themselves will cure the issue pointing out that the gluing issues had cost Kyosho’s Christopher Krapp both of his timed runs, the former race winner managing only the 20th fastest time.
Getting outpaced by the Yokomo of multiple French Champion and good friend Jasmin, Urbain said his problem was that he overdrove for the conditions. Expecting the track to have more grip due to the cooler temperature he said he drove too aggressively. Looking forward to Q1 he said he will leave his VBC as is as it should be fine for the ‘happy hour’ conditions. Behind Urbain, Marc Fischer completed the Top 6 with the Serpent driver unable to improve his time. Making changes to his car he said they had little or no effect on the handling and he has no idea how this is possible. For Q1 he will revert back to the set-up he ran in the first timed practice and just try to end day 1 with a solid qualifier.
View the complete event results here.
View our event image gallery here.
