Coelho takes opening qualifier at ETS
Bruno Coelho has taken the opening round of qualifying at Round 5 of the ETS in the Netherlands, the Xray driver fastest from the dominant force in practice Freddy Sudhoff. Starting behind the top seed after team-mate & No. 2 seed Alexander Hagberg opted to sit out Q1, Coelho was able to take advantage of mistakes from both Sudhoff and his Awesomatix team-mate Lucas Urbain to take a slightly surprise TQ run given Sudhoff’s advantage in practice. Having seeded 8th, Ronald Volker was to complete the Top 3 ahead of Yokomo team-mates Christopher Krapp and Nicholas Lee with Urbain rounding out the Top 6 from Jilles Groskamp.
‘For sure it was a good round and as expected Awesomatix were very strong’ said Coelho. ‘I was able to fight with Freddy and Lucas but then Lucas had a mistake so it was only me and Freddy. I saw then that he had a small mistake and this gave me a little space to breath which I could manage to the end’. While pleased to end the first official day of the event with a TQ, 3 more qualifiers on tomorrow schedule, the reigning Champion and winner of last year’s Dutch encounter said, ‘we still have a lot of work to do. I only made 3-laps in the final practice so we lost track time there but from the laps I did do we ran the same set-up with a few tweaks. Now we find the same pace as this was an improvement for sure but it is not the best it can be’. Looking to Saturday’s action, he commented, ‘the morning should be the fastest the track will be so it’s important one but our car was good this morning so lets see’.
‘I can only blame myself’, said Sudhoff. The ETS Madrid winner continued, ‘The car was still pretty but I had a huge problem with the shadows’. With the setting sun creating shadows at the end of the track but also hard on drivers eyes, the German said he wore his sunglasses to prevent his eyes watering up but the glasses were to dark for the shadows. ‘It was so dark I messed up at the end of the straight several times’. Still happy with his car, he concluded, ‘I will do better tomorrow’.
Setting the fastest lap of the opening qualifier and finish 1-second off Coelho, Volker said, ‘It’s not far off TQ but we have to make some sensible changes to find the little bit we are missing’. The multiple ETS Champion added, ‘it was a great run for the team with a P3, 4 & 5. It was a great team effort but we have homework to do tonight to get a good set-up. We have a practice in the morning before Q2 so we will use that to try what ideas we come up with after our talk tonight.’
Krapp said, ‘we are still a little behind the game but position wise it was not to bad with 3rd, 4th and 5th’. He went on to say, ‘to be honest I don’t know what to do but tonight we will talk as a team and then try something during practice but the issue is that the car is just still to stable’.
Summing up his first effort, Lee said, ‘It was alright, I thought I could have driven better’. The Singapore driver added, ‘The end of the straight was very hard because of the shadow and I missed my lines’. Like his team-mates, he also highlighted the car’s stability as the main issue he faces concluding ‘I hope we can find something more in the car for tomorrow’.
‘I went full retard. I knew I was in the lead and pushed too hard, shit happens’, explained Urbain who was right in the mix until the final minute. Hitting the right hand curbing at the end of the straight he said, ‘I can blame the shadows but I was driving full punch and the way it rolled I couldn’t save it. I have the tortoise sticker on my car for a reason, today I totally earned it’. Happy to have been in the hunt for the TQ, the French driver was looking forward to his second opportunity tomorrow saying, ‘my car is even better in the mornings so I can go for it again then’.
In the other classes, it was Pro Stock top seed Olivier Bultynck who took Q1 ahead of Tim Benson with Dane Frederik Mikkelsen completing the Top 3. Formula saw No. 5 seed & Infinity driver Jitse Miedema get the better of the Serpent of top seed & former champion David Ehrbar. Championship points leader & reigning Champion Jan Ratheisky set the third fastest time. In 40+ Masters, Toni Mateo from Gran Canaria maintain his practice topping form to TQ the first one ahead of Andreas Weyhoven and Werner Schmitzer. Daniel Pöhlmann took the max points in the first 17.5 Stock qualifier from top seed Tobias Baumbach and Chris Betts.
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