Volker takes Q1 at ETS Austria
Ronald Volker has TQ’d the opening round of qualifying at the Yokomo Euro Touring Series in Austria. Having been second fastest in practice behind Bruno Coelho, the first of the four scheduled qualifiers would see that order reversed as Volker was able to benefit from a mistake by Coelho at the 2-minute mark. Behind them Marc Rheinard would ensure the Top 3 would respresent the championship’s big three manufacturers as he took his Tamiya to third, the Top 3 covered by 0.584 of a second.
Pleased to open the weekend with a TQ, Volker said, ‘intially Bruno checked out and I was just trying to keep up but as the heat went on I got better and started to find my rhythm which allowed me to take the lead when Bruno had his mistake’. Having been as close as they were to Coelho in practice, the German said they made the decision to leave his BD7 unchanged for Q1 with a clean run the focus. Having conducted pre-race testing in Hrotovice in the days leading up to Wels, Xray & Tamiya doing their testing at the Hudy Arena, Volker feels they have come into the event in a much stronger position but said they still need to improve. The reigning champion said they ‘need to make small changes for tomorrow just to have a better pace’ so they can ‘win Q2 on pace and not by a mistake from Bruno’.
‘I was driving very well until the 3rd minute when I made a mistake’ was Coelho’s reaction to his first qualifier. The ETS Germany winner would lose over a second when in the corner before the straight he hit the dot and flipped his T4. Posting the fastest lap of the round from team-mate Alexander Hagberg, who crashed heavily during the race, Coelho said while he couldn’t get back to P1 he was pleased to have been able to get ‘super close’ to Volker. With his car working ‘really good’ he said without the mistake it would have been an easy TQ and with no plans to change his set-up for the tomorrow morning’s second qualifier he will just look to putting in a clean run.
After completely going over his TRF419 to trace the problem of it being very loose when turning right but fine to the left, Rheinard said while they failed to find any issues it was now good. ‘Much happier with the car’, the German who shares the points lead after 2 rounds with Coelho, said he got caught out by the amount of time you spend on full throttle and this left him with low voltage over the final laps. Planning to charge to a higher voltage for Q2 he said other than this the run was fine and he is quite confident about tomorrow’s three qualifying runs.
Posting a fourth for the qualifier and best of the drivers on 20-lap runs, Viljami Kutvonen said it was as ‘a super consistent run’. The Finn added while ‘4th was a good position’ they ‘needed to find more pace’ highlighting he benefited from the mistakes of both Hagberg and VBC Racing’s Yannic Prumper. Switching from a Protoform LTC-R to an LTC-R 2.0 for Q1 he said it felt better for that run but going forward he said he was still undecided having been switching between the two shells throughout practice. He added irrespectively of which body he runs he needs to change something in his A800 set-up to knock a few tenths off his fastest lap times.
‘What an idiot, the first lap was a stupid mistake by myself’, was how Serpent’s Marc Fischer summed up his first qualifier with the new 4X. Losing 2.8-seconds due to the error, the German said without this he would have finished ahead of Viljami. Yet to make the A-Main this season, Fischer said other than his mistake everything was fine. Opting against changing the all new car for Q1 saying they ‘just want to get in the books’ he said they are considering changing to a softer diff for the next qualifier but will give the idea more thought overnight.
Completing the Top 6, Christopher Krapp said he felt in practice he had a good car over 5-minutes. Running in the second fastest heat, having been 18th fastest at the end of practice, the factory Tamiya driver said he just aimed to stay on his wheels for the 5-minutes with the fast chicane especially difficult – as Hagberg, Prumper and others found to their cost. Feeling the latest development of the pending TRF419X kit release is a step forward on what they had at Round 2 of the ETS, he said small tweaks to the car after practice were an improvement. With nerves getting the better of him towards the closing stages of the qualifier, the former ETS race winner said that was something he would work on for Day 2.
Another manufacturer debuting a new car this weekend is Schumacher with Magnus Vassmar taking it to P7 in the first qualifier. The Swede, whose team-mates Elliot Harper and Michal Orlowski were 13th and 15th respectively, said his Mi6 was ‘easy to drive’ adding he was himself ‘quite surprised with his time’. Making ‘a few small changes’ after practice, looking to build up knowledge of the new car, Vassmar said this led to ‘better overall balance’ while retaining good rotation. Describing the car as having ‘very good pace’ he said he hoped to be able to make further improvements for Q2. Behind him, the Top 10 would be completed by Dionys Stadler, Akio Sobue and Marco Kaufmann.
In the Xray Pro Stock class defending champion Marek Cerny topped the times from Xray team-mate Jan Ratheisky. Having set the pace in practice, the current championship leader would be just 0.193 off the Czech’s pace with Valentin Hettrich also on the same second to claim a P3. With the Formula division running two of their qualifier today at the Modellbau Wels hobby show hosted event, Olivier Bultynck took the first round ahead Ratheisky and David Ehrbar, with the order reversed in Q2, Ratheisky taking P1.
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