Rheinard heads Tamiya 1-2 in opening ETS A-Main
Marc Rheinard headed a Tamiya 1-2 in the opening A-Main at the Yokomo Euro Touring Series season, the Top Qualifier heading home a very evenly matched lead group from team-mate Viktor Wilck. While the race saw no changes of position among the Top 4, drivers had no time to let up with the pack covered by 1-second with Yokomo’s Ronald Volker finishing third followed by Xray’s Alexander Hagberg. The most significant moment of the race at the Hudy Racing Arena was a coming together between Jilles Groskamp and Yannic Prumper, the latter collecting the rear of the World Champion send both cars off onto the grass infield while in the battle for fourth position with Hagberg.
Moving one step closer to registering his first overall win of the 2013/14 ETS season, Rheinard said ‘for sure it was good result’ but he said his prototype TRF418 didn’t feel as good as yesterday. The German said while the track was slower due to the sunny hot morning in Trencin, his car wasn’t the same left to right adding it was maybe just down to the set of tyres he had for the race. Very happy with his start, immediately pulling a few tenths on Wilck, he said the Swede made a good comeback and towards the end he was ‘just trying to keep (his) car on track’ to stay ahead of the very close bunch in which all four drivers ran also identical 18.3 second fastest lap times.
Wilck said he was ‘just too slow at the beginning’ and his start was something he need to improve for A2. Like Rheinard, he too did not feel his car was as good as in qualifying describing the handling as ‘so so’. Suffering from understeer he hopes changes can be made to dial this out with A2 conditions set to be even warmer than A1.
Winner of the season finale last year, Volker said the sunny conditions had left the track with very low grip and the difficult conditions made it impossible to not make minor errors. Describing the pace of the Top 6 as ‘identical’ he said you might caught up to the driver on a lap and then on the next lap as they make a minor error have to check-up and drop back again. With all the drivers pace so even, the four time ETS Champion said any advantage needs to come from the car and for A2 they will be trying to find something in his Yokomo’s set-up.
Hagberg said again he struggled at little at the start of the run with his T4 improving as the race progressed. The swede said it was hard to make any progress in the race due to how close everyone was and it was going to take mistakes from the driver in front to find a way past. Saying it was great to see things so even this weekend, Volker having dominated the passed few races, he said for A2 he will just try to push that little bit harder.
Setting the fastest lap of the race with an 18.297, Groskamp said his Orion powered Tamiya was ‘maximum good’ but not the result. Ending up 6th behind TRF team-mate Akio Sobue who had started behind him, the Dutch ace said he made a good start getting past Yannic Prumper from where he was slowly able to catch Hagberg. He said it was a ‘shame’ that Prumper made contact with him but the positive of the race was that he had finally got his car to be more consistent over the run with it still fast at the start with far less drop off in performance over the 5-minutes. Ending up 8th, Prumper took full responsibility for contact saying he braked too late.
In the Xray Pro-Stock class there was also a win for the Top Qualifier with defending champion Marek Cerny taking full control of proceedings to win by a very comfortable margin from David Nemcek, who managed to get past Kuba Simurda early on. Joint championship leader Jan Ratheisky had a lonely racing finishing fourth in front of the Awesomatix of Mike Gosvig who had a good race coming through from 10th on the grid. In Formula, Olivier Bultynck took a very close win over back to back champion Ratheisky as Top Qualifier David Ehrbar, who set the fastest lap, had a tough race ending up 5th.
Ride Modified A-Main Leg 1 Result
1.(1) Marc Rheinard (DE) – Tamiya Racing Factory – 17/5:06.860
2.(2) Viktor Wilck (SE) – Tamiya Racing Factory – 17/5:07.074
3.(3) Ronald Volker (DE) – Team Yokomo – 17/5:07.310
4.(4) Alexander Hagberg (SE) – Xray Racing Team – 17/5:07.868
5.(7) Akio Sobue (JP) – Tamiya Racing Factory – 17/5:09.934
6.(6) Jilles Groskamp (NL) – Tamiya Racing Factory – 17/5:13.708
7.(8) Loic Jasmin (FR) – Team Yokomo – 17/5:14.254
8.(5) Yannic Prumper (DE) – Team Yokomo – 17/5:17.199
9.(9) Viljami Kutvonen (FI) – Awesomatix – 17/5:18.311
10.(10)Alessio Menicucci (IT) – Xray Racing Team – 16/5:02.007
Xray Pro-Stock A-Main Leg 1 Result
1.(1) Marek Cerny (CZ) – Xray – 15/5:01.202
2.(3) David Nemcek (SK) – Xray – 15/5:03.083
3.(2) Kuba Simurda (CZ) – Xray – 15/5:03.353
4.(4) Jan Ratheisky (DE) – Xray – 15/5:06.624
5.(10)Mike Gosvig (DK) – Awesomatix – 15/5:09.485
6.(9) Mustafa Alp (TR) – VBC Racing – 15/5:10.653
7.(6) Tobias Seidl (DE) – Team C – 15/5:11.255
8.(7) Kevin Homburg (DE) – ARC – 15/5:12.095
9.(8) Philip Tschupp (CH) – Serpent – 11/3:54.462
10.(5)Henrik Heitsch (DE) – ARC – 8/2:44.161
View the complete event results here.
View our event image gallery here.
