Rheinard is Top Qualifier at ETS opener
Marc Rheinard is Top Qualifier at the opening round of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series, the Czech Republic event marking the Tamiya driver’s first pole position on carpet since 2010 in Poland. Going into the fourth and final round of qualifying in Hrotovice the battle for the overall TQ was between Rheinard & Alexander Hagberg but producing his first clean run of the event it was defending Champion Ronald Volker who would go fastest to secure 2nd on the grid demoting Hagberg to third.
Third fastest in the final qualifier, Rheinard was happy to get the 8th season of the ETS underway from the front of the grid having started the event 4th and 7th respectively on the previous two visits. Finishing 1.7 seconds ahead of his arch rival Volker in Q4, the Tamiya driver said working off just one set of tyres his TRF419 is ‘getting slower & slower’. Having changed his shock set-up to equal weight oil front & rear for the last round after it help team-mate Viktor Wilck make a big improvement in Q3, the 3-time World Champion said for him this caused the car to push more and have less corner speed. Planning to revert back to a heavier oil in the front he also plans to return his shock positions to what he ran in Q1 & 2. Commenting on the race, the championship’s most winning driver with 12 victories, said ‘normally if I don’t crash I should be Ok’ but added ‘having to drive on the limit’ to match is rivals pace this could prove more difficult.
Having thrown away two potential TQ runs due to late errors, Volker was clearly happy to end qualifying with an error free TQ run. The 3-time winner of the event said ‘finally I got a clean run’ but added ‘I am still not 100% where I want to be’. Critical of his driving this weekend he said despite the clean run he still hit the corner dots too much. Having made a ‘major change’ to the set-up of his BD7 the German said the ‘big gamble’ paid off as he was ‘clearly faster compared to the others’. Disappointed at throwing away Q3, he said the pace is there and now it was time make the most of it. Like his rivals he said overtaking is going to be a challenge but he hopes with a good start he can pressure Rheinard into a mistake rather than have to see off pressure from Hagberg adding the pace of the Top 3 is very similar.
Hagberg was rather annoyed with his own performance in the final qualifier having been potentially looking at his second ever ETS TQ but instead ended up 3rd. Confident in the performance of his Xray, the Swede is predicting a really close battle between the Top 3 but admits the opportunities to overtake are very difficult as ‘there is not much room’ to attempt a pass.
As such heading the other battle of the A-Main, Yannic Prumper will start fourth, the Yokomo driver posting his third P5 run of qualifying this time behind Xray’s Bruno Coelho who produced his best run to book 8th on the grid for his ETS debut. Going back to a narrower rear on his BD7 the former ETS race winner was pleased with how it ran in the warm-up laps, but mechanic Toni Rheinard said once the run started the tyres picked up traction and he fell completely off the pace. For the first of the finals the plan is to running a different set of tyres as well as change to a slightly lighter diff oil.
Enjoying a strong weekend for Awesomatix who have taken podium finishes here the last two seasons with Freddy Sudhoff, Finland’s Viljami Kutvonen completes the top half of the grid. Sixth fastest in Q4, he said they are on the limit now in terms of traction roll. While this makes his A700 Evo difficult to drive for 5-minutes he was pleased that he could match the fastest lap times of the Top 3 last time out. Admitting the Top 3 are at a different level in overall speed he thinks 4th is an achievable goal but said he needs to find something that makes the car a little easier to drive and he will discuss his options with the unique car’s designer Oleg Babich.
Behind Kutvonen, Viktor Wilck will line his Tamiya up 6th in front of Serpent’s Marc Fischer and Coehlo. Last year’s BQ, Juho Levanen made the cut this time round thanks to a 10th in the last qualifier with Xray designer Martin Hudy completing the 10 car line-up for what is the 40th race of the ETS.
In Pro Stock, despite having sewn up his first ever TQ in Q3 Lars Hoppe went to complete a clean sweep of qualifying. Behind the ARC driver, last year’s race winner Jan Ratheisky will start 2nd followed by his Xray team-mate & defending champion Marek Cerny. The only driver to have take two wins on an ETS weekend, winning both Pro Stock & Formula at the Sport V Hotel last year, Ratheisky will again start the Formula class on pole position with his new X1 chassis.
View the complete event results here.
View our event image gallery here.
