Sudhoff top seed in Apeldoorn
Freddy Sudhoff is the top seed in Apeldoorn for the the penultimate round of the ETS. With the second of the two seeding rounds taking place during the hottest part of the day, the seeding was to be based off the opening controlled practice with the Top 17 places remaining unchanged. Even with the mercury on the rise, Sudhoff maintained his status on the slower track topping CP2 by 2/10ths from Bruno Coelho who hit issues and completed just 4-laps. While he will run the No.6 in qualifying, Christopher Krapp managed the close the gap on the hotter track as he set the third fastest time of CP2 ahead of Yokomo team-mate Ronald Volker. With the track around 3/10th slower, Alexander Hagberg will line up second for this evening’s opening qualifier ahead of Coelho, Nicolas Lee, Lucas Urbain and Krapp.
Summing up his final practice run, Sudhoff said,’the track was hotter so the car was a little more loose in some corners but the pace was still quite good and and could still focus fully on driving’. Looking to Q1, the Awesomatix driver said, ‘It might be difficult. With position of the sun now there are shadows at the end of the straight which is going to make it hard to see the curb or your line but in my car I am feeling good for qualifying’.
Asked how he was feeling going into qualifying, Hagberg, who set the 5th fastest time for CP2, said, ‘we made a set-up change for CP2 and it wasn’t better so we will revert to the CP1 set-up for Q1 but I ready to try flight for the TQ’. Expecting the track temperature to remain similarly high to that of CP2, the Swede added, ‘Tyre management is going to be important. It is going to be a question of who has the strongest finish not the strongest start which is pretty exciting’.
Xray team-mate Coelho said, ‘I only got the 3-laps because we had some issue on the car so I couldn’t try what we changed for the CP’. The World Champion continued, ‘the first laps were good but it is about the 5-minutes and we didn’t get to test this. A lot of people are the same pace but Freddy is a little faster so we will see’. Asked about the high temperatures he replied, ‘It is going to be very hard on the electronics, tyres and car. I hope everything survives’.
Krapp said, ‘I actually improved over 5-minutes which is good. We slightly improve the car but it’s still the same story as before, we are a little behind and need to find something’. With the expected hot track for Q1, the former ETS race winner added, ‘in the hot conditions it is more open, as everyone drops a lot. So overall it looks not that bad, we are just a little behind but we are making small improvements all the time’.
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