Euro Touring Series

May 2, 2015

Volker TQs another close qualifier in Austria

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Ronald Volker posted a second TQ run at Round 4 of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series in Austria, the German coming out on top of a very closely contested Q3 that saw the Top 3 covered by less than half a second. Posting a new overall fastest TQ time Volker would outpace Bruno Coelho by 0.258 of a second up who in turn was 0.216 fastest than his Xray team-mate Alexander Hagberg. A number of mistakes while on a TQ pace would leave Q2 pace setter Akio Sobue 7th fastest.

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‘Another super close qualifier’ was Volker’s description of the the penultimate round of qualifying at the temporary Mattsee track. After the frustration of Q2, when he got blocked on the last lap costing him a TQ run, the Yokomo driver said he was ‘very happy’ to lock up at worst a Top 2 start position with Sobue the only one who can deny him from adding to his tally as the ETS’ most successful Top Qualifier. Tweaking the set-up on his LRP powered BD7 the reigning champion said this ‘improved the overall a bit’ but they still need to do more to find that ‘extra bit of steering’. Happier with how the car started out he said it still developed understeer towards the end of the 5-minutes and that’s something he hopes they can work on for the final run so he can in particular see off Sobue’s Tamiya.

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For Coelho Q3 was almost a repeat of Q2 when he rolled his T4. Luckily this time round his car came back down on fours as he clipped the same curbing. Recovering from his moment to finish under 3/10ths behind Volker he said it shows the speed is there and he just needs to run a clean round. Switching to a heavier rear diff for the round, the 21-year-old said this ‘was not a good choice’ and he will go back for the last one.

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Setting the fastest lap of Q3, Hagberg said a downstop adjustment to his ORCA powered T4 had made the ‘car much better than the last one (Q2)’. The Swede was happy to have been ‘closer to the TQ’ than before. Laying down the TQ pace for a number of laps, the Nitro Touring Car World Champion said he had two small mistakes, a back marker helping him out to make one of them, and if it wasn’t for this his car had the pace to TQ. Much happier with the car he will leave it unchanged for the final qualifier.

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Fourth fastest Yannic Prumper said there’s obviously something wrong with the set of tyres he has been running. Changing from 10k to 5k oil in his DB7’s diff, a change that normally makes a big difference, the 3-time ETS race winner said he couldn’t feel any difference. With the 21-year-old’s second set of allocated tyres brand new and used tyres proving the best option for the low traction conditions he said he had no choice than to risk the new tyres adding ‘there is no point in continuing with it as it is now’.

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Marc Fischer said he was lucky to post the 6th fastest time as he suffered a centre pulley bearing failure. Having tried a front roll centre change, the Serpent driver said it wasn’t a significant improve and they need to try something more so for the final qualifier they’ll go with a completely different set-up. Making big changes to the shock set-up, the toe in and roll centres he said he had ‘nothing to lose’ and hopefully it would help his team-mate Viktor Wilck make the A-Main. Ninth fastest, the Swede said he had no steering. Starting last on such a short track he also needed to let both Volker and Sobue to pass him but ultimately he was ‘going too slow anyway’. Currently sitting in the BQ position in the qualifying ranking he will copy the set-up Fischer is going to run in Q4.

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Completing the Top 6, Michal Orlowski said it was a ‘pretty good run with no mistakes’. sporting a new blue based colour scheme this weekend, moving away from the red the 13-year-old has been running for the past 6-years, he is very happy with his Schumacher having run it the same throughout qualifying. Like everyone he said more steering would be nice and for the last qualifier he plans to go up in the rear diff in the hope it will give him a little more on-power steering exiting the corners.

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Sobue said his tyres reached their limit in the third qualifier and with his TRF419 loose he ended up making a few mistakes including getting away with launching the car on two wheels the first time through the chicane. Only 0.001 of second of Hagberg’s fastest lap, when passing Wilck the World Championship finalist would suffer a spin loosing him 2-seconds. He will fit his second set of tyres for Q4. Making a tyre change for Q3 team-mate Marc Rheinard said while everyone went faster he went slower ending up on 12th quickest.

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Andy Moore posted the 8th fastest time but the HB driver said a 12.9 second lap as a result of having to let Volker by cost him a possible Top 4 for the round as everyone is ‘super tight’ on pace. Describing the run as ‘alright with no mistakes’, the British driver said he is still searching for more steering especially at the end of the straight.

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May 2, 2015

Sobue snatches Q2 as Volker gets blocked

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Tamiya’s Aiko Sobue snatched a TQ run in the second round of qualifying at the Yokomo Euro Touring Series in Austria this morning helped by Q1 pace setter Ronald Volker getting blocked on his final lap. The Japanese driver, who on his arrival in Austria quickly marked himself out as a podium contender topping practice, took the qualifier by 0.387 of a second as Schumacher driver Michal Orlowski cost Volker 4/10ths.

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A very happy Sobue, who opened qualifying last night with the 3rd fastest time, said while his driving was better today there was still room for improvement. Leaving his car unchanged from yesterday the 20-year-old said his car was ‘very good’ joking that TRF engineer Takayuki Kono had told him he wasn’t to touch a screw or even remove the battery tape on the TF419. Setting the fastest lap, for Q3 Sobue said his focus is to find more time from improving the consistency of his driving.

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‘I hope Michal (Orlowski) learns from his mistake as it cost me a TQ run’, was Volker’s initial comment on Q2. The four time consecutive ETS Champion said his Yokomo was a little more loose this morning and while it helped in terms of giving him steering the overall balance was not perfect. Slower than Sobue and Bruno Coelho in the early part of the run he said his LRP BD7 was strongest in the middle of the run and while ‘Coelho disappeared’ he was able to catch the Tamiya of Akio. Looking to get his car to start stronger he said his engineer Yukijiro Umino will make a set-up change for the penultimate round of qualifying.

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Third fastest, Alexander Hagberg said changes to his Xray T4 had made it ‘slightly better’. The Swede said while his start and the finish pace is good he is losing time mid run. Feeling he might be over working his tyres, he said a combination of a set-up change and better driving should help to improve his consistency. Team-mate Coelho was right in the mix for the TQ but with a minute and half to go he rolled his T4 after hitting the curbing dropping him to 9th. The Portuguese driver said while his car was a little loose at the beginning, after that it was ‘super good’ and he would run it unchanged for the next qualifier.

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Posting the 4th fastest time, ETS Italy race winner Yannic Prumper described Q2 as ‘worse’ than Q1 when he was ended up P5. The Yokomo driver said his BD7 was both ‘sliding and pushing’ for the first 3-minutes although at the end of the run the car ‘felt good to drive’. Having opted to do just a single warm-up lap having struggled with the car at the start of Q1 after running the full warm-up period, he said this strategy didn’t work. With Yokomo team manager Robert Itoh as his mechanic this weekend he said they will try a different set-up for the third round.

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Setting the fifth fastest time Xray’s Marco Kaufmann was ‘maximum happy’ at being able to back up his P6 from Q1. The 21-year-old was running third in the top heat for a time but said nerves got the better of him and his driving was a bit untidy towards the end of the 5-minutes. With the German ‘looking safe’ for his first A-Main start of the season and him ‘very happy’ with his T4 he said the only plan for Q3 is to drive ‘full power’.

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Completing the Top 6, Marc Rheinard said while his car feels alright most of the time it ‘sometimes then just does funny things’. Still unable to get on the throttle out of the corners he said Top 6 is pretty much the most he can expect this weekend adding that there is ‘maximum one second to be found’ if he drives better and stays in his rhythm but this is hard as the car suddenly decides to slide. One option the 13 times ETS race winner is considering is changing to his second set of tyres but with tyres improving as they get more runs on them he said the problem is his second set has only run 2-minutes so they could be a further disadvantage.

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Serpent’s Marc Fischer would take his S411 to the seventh fastest time but the German said he is losing time with understeer at the start adding it was ‘pushing more than yesterday’ even though he didn’t change set-up. ‘OK’ mid race he said the slow start also meant he then had Volker chasing him down eventually having to open up to let him by all of which adds up to lose time with him only 3/10th off Rheinard. He will ‘change something’, not sure what yet, for Q3. Team-mate Viktor Wilck tried a different set-up to start off the day but said it wasn’t good leading to him making contact with the boards and breaking his car. Behind Fischer, Orlowski would end up P8 while Dionys Stadler completed the Top 10 behind Coelho.

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In Formula the second qualifier would see a reverse of Q1 with Serpent’s David Ehrbar pipping reigning champion Jan Ratheisky’s Xray by 0.041 of a second. Xray’s Mike Gosvig completed the Top 3 followed by Michele Romagnoli and former champion Herbert Weber.

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May 1, 2015

Volker takes Q1 in Mattsee

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Ronald Volker has TQ’d a very close opening round of qualifying at Round 4 of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series in Austria. Winner of the fahr(T)raum hosted event last year, the Yokomo driver would top the times by just 0.187 of a second from Xray’s Bruno Coelho. Just a further 0.265 off, Tamiya’s Akio Sobue who topped the times in practice would complete the Top 3 around the covered temporary asphalt track.

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‘Pretty close’ was how Volker summed up the first qualifier. Starting second behind Sobue having ended up P2 in practice, the defending champion said he was that focused on trying to beat the Japanese driver that he wasn’t able to gauge how close Coelho actually was. Having closed in on Sobue at the start of the run he said as his BD7 started to suffer a little understeer he was on the limit trying to keep up with the Japanese driver. ‘Very happy to TQ Q1’, he said for tomorrow the plan is to try and find more steering which ‘hopefully will be enough to hold off Bruno & Akio’.

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Coelho was happy with his 2nd considering a mistake in the opening laps saw his T4 slide on its side before ‘luckily’ it came back down on 4-wheels. Describing his car as ‘strange’ at the start of the run he said after a few laps he was ‘good’. Happy with how it ran in the warm-up laps he said the only thing he can attribute the ‘strange feeling’ to was the tyres going cold as the waited to get off the start, the ambient temperature at the time of the qualifier having dropped noticeably. Setting the fastest lap of Q1, he said the speed is there and he was catching Volker so without errors he is confident for Q2.

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Sobue said his TRF419 was good but the problem was the driver. Making ‘a lot of small driver errors’, the 20-year-old said this is something he needs to work on for tomorrow but having run a faster lap time than Volker he is happy his car has the potential for a TQ run. High profile team-mate Marc Rheinard, who is running in the second fastest heat grouping, would post the 7th fastest time just missing out on a 25-lap run. The 4-time World Champion described it as a ‘slow run’. Running the same set-up as Sobue he said while the car is fine into the corner he ‘just can’t hit the throttle on the way out’ as it gets loose and he is ‘just trying to keep it on the track’.

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Posting the fourth fastest time Alexander Hagberg said an early mistake caused him to lose his rhythm. Later in the run the Swede said he also had problems with traffic. The driver closest to his team-mate Coelho in terms of outright fastest lap time he said his ORCA powered T4 was ‘alright’ and but there was still a ‘few small details to work out’.

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Setting the fifth fastest time Team Yokomo’s Yannic Prumper, who is without his Round 3 winning mechanic Toni Rheinard this weekend, said his BD7 had ‘big push’ at the start. The car would improve but towards the end of the five minutes the problem would return. He said the track felt to have more traction and for Q2 in the morning he might opt to run no warm-up laps to see if the car starts out better.

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Completing the Top 6, Xray driver Marco Kaufmann was clearly happy with his qualifying performance. Ninth fastest in practice, the 21-year-old said he went into the qualifier just hoping he had enough speed to not get passed by top seed Sobue. Describing the result as ‘very good start for me’, he said running less rear toe-in to what he had in practice had improved his T4’s steering and he said he would leave it unchanged for Q2. Having not made the A-Main ‘for a long time’, he said he just wanted one more such run to secure an A-Main start for Sunday.

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Andy Moore would set the eight fastest time continuing to be the fastest of the HB drivers. Team-mate Freddy Sudhoff just missed out on the Top 10, his PRO 5 11th fastest while Jilles Groskamp struggled to 28th. Moore said his run ‘wasn’t perfect’. Starting 10th he had to open up for Akio and then towards the end of the run trying to not also have to open up to let Volker passed he made a mistake that cost him over a second. The former World Champion said he still needs to work on getting his car better at the start of the run. Having changed his set-up for Q1 the car now started to work after 1-minute rather that the two it needed previously so he will continue in the same direction with further set-up changes. Behind Moore, Schumacher’s Michal Orlowski and Serpent’s Viktor Wilck completed the Top 10.

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In the Xray Pro-Stock class, which completed two of their four rounds of qualifying today, it was Season #8 Round 1 dominator Lars Hoppe who laid down the TQ pace. The ARC driver, who missed Round 3 in Italy, would take Q1 from the Tamiya of Christian Donath and in Q2 would outpace the Yokomo of Italian Nico Catelani. For defending champion Marek Cerny it was not a good day. Breaking his Xray in Q1 after just a minute, the Czech driver wouldn’t even start Q2 due to steering problems.

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Despite racing with a shoulder injury and wearing a special support Jan Ratheisky hasn’t been hampered too much. Setting the pace in practice for both Pro Stock and Formula, the reigning Formula Champion would TQ the opening round of Formula from Serpent’s David Ehrbar who in Ratheisky’s absence took the win at Round 3 in Italy.

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May 1, 2015

Sobue tops seeding at ETS Austria

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Tamiya’s Akio Sobue is the top seed for qualifying at Round 4 of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series in Mattsee, Austria, after the Japanese driver topped the final round of practice from defending champion Ronald Volker. The Japanese driver’s first appearance in Season #8 and the only Tamiya in the Top 10, he posted the fastest 3-consecutive laps of CP2 by 0.271 of a second from that of Volker with Schumacher’s Michal Orlowski completing the Top 3. For free practice and CP1 pace setter Bruno Coelho a switch to new tyres, used proving faster on the low traction conditions, left him unable to improve his time as he dropped to sixth.

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Changing his shocks, ackermann and raising the front camber links on his TRF419, Sobue was very happy with the improvement. Giving the car more traction the 20-year-old said he would be keeping it the same for tonight’s opening qualifier. His first time to the fahr(T)raum track, the World Championship finalist said he is very at home on the layout as it is very similar to his home track of RC Paradise in Nagoya.

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‘Satisfied with second’ was Volker’s reaction to his run. Only 14th fastest in the first controlled practice, the Yokomo driver said as expected the second run was better but feels the seeding is not a true reflection of the actual pace of everyone adding he expects the Top 10 to be very close over 5-minutes as it is hard for anyone to get anymore speed due to the low traction which he said is acting as somewhat of an equaliser.

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After fitting a rear brace to the back of his Mi5, Orlowski was very happy with the improved mid corner rotation. With CP2 being his seventh run on the same set of the championship’s hand out Ride tyres, the Polish driver’s biggest concern for the opening qualifier is that the tyres he will run have only done one practice run. In terms of the car set-up he will leave it unchanged.

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Going back to an earlier set-up and onto used tyres, having struggled in CP1 on new tyres, Alexander Hagberg would post the 4th fastest time. The Swede said his T4 was ‘not so bad’ but added it was ‘not perfect but very close’. Looking for more overall traction he will make some small tweaks to his set-up for Q1. Team-mate Coelho said on new tyres his T4 had ‘a lot of push’ and he will go with a different used set of tyres for his first qualifier.

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Marc Fischer would set the 5th fastest time. Changing both the roll centres and the droop on his Serpent S411, he said the droop change ‘was not so good’. With the car lifting a front wheel in the chicane he will revert back to the droop he ran in CP1. Team-mate Viktor Wilck set the 8th fastest time.

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Posting the 7th fastest time, Yannic Prumper joked ‘ I got quicker but so did everyone else’. Runner-up here last year, the Round 3 winner said his Yokomo was so so over 3-laps but feels over a full 5-minutes it should be ‘not so bad’.

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Completing the Top 10 behind the Xray of Marco Kaufmann and ahead of the Tamiya of Marc Rheinard, Moore was the only other driver along with Coelho in the Top 15 to not improve their CP1 time. Second fastest in the first run, the British driver changed springs and they ‘didn’t work’. He will go back to the previous springs for Q1 and is confident his PRO 5 should be good again.

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May 1, 2015

Coelho’s form continues in first controlled practice

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Having headed an Xray 1-2 in free practice, Bruno Coelho carried his form into controlled practice as he again set the fastest 3-consecutive lap time in the first of the two rounds. With team-mate Alexander Hagberg posting only the 10th fastest time, it was HB’s Andy Moore who was closest to Coelho’s pace with Michal Orlowski a surprise 3rd. For defending champion Ronald Volker, a driver renowed for being the benchmark pace setter in practice, he would only end up 14th fastest, two place behind arch rival Marc Rheinard.

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Moving the rear arm position on his LRP powered T4 for the 4-minute run, Coelho said this gave him more traction and better mid corner steering on the low traction asphalt. Happy with the improvement made, the World Championship runner-up plans to only check over the car opting to leave the set-up unchanged. For team-mate Hagberg a combination of a set-up change and running new tyres left him with a car that was ‘not good’. He will revert back to his previous set-up and fit the car with a different set of used tyres for his run.

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Having made some small adjustments to his PRO 5, Moore said his pace comes in after 2-minutes with the balance of the car not quite right at the beginning of the run. He said he is not sure if it’s his tyre prep or whether he needs to change the set-up to get the car to work the tyres more at the start. While he feels he doesn’t need to change the set-up as the ‘car is ok to drive’, he said looking at how Coelho is consistently quick he will make some small changes to try and reduce the deficit.

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Orlowski was ‘very happy’ with his pace, the Schumachers running well here as team-mate Elliot Harper posted the 5th fastest time. The young Polish driver said they did a lot of work with the Mi5 in practice yesterday and it’s paying off now. Looking for more steering he will fit a rear brace to the car to get better rotation.

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Harper was happy with the progress he has made since arriving in Austria, saying the team have been working really well together to get to where they are now. With ‘understeer, you’re probably hearing that from everyone’, his only issue the British driver said it’s now really down to him to put in clean runs in qualifying. Crashing heavily in the last practice he said it didn’t seem to affect the car as his fastest 3-laps came afterwards.

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Serpent’s Marc Fischer would post the 4th fastest time. A track where the German went well last year, he said arriving with the set-up he used 12-months ago they have pretty much changed everything on the car twice to get it to work in the ‘not so easy traction condition’. Team-mate Viktor Wilck would complete the Top 6, the Swede echoing Fischer’s comments but encouraged that they have now found a good direction with the set-up.

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Volker, who TQ’d and won this event when it made its first visit to Mattsee last year, said his pace reflected the fact he was running in new tyres but declared all would be fine for CP2. The German said he expected to be slightly off pace due to using the run for scrubbing tyres but said it is not normal for old tyres to be faster than new ones. Team-mate Prumper, like Volker and Hagberg was on new tyres and would post only the 8th fastest time but said despite that his BD7 was better following set-up changes made after free practice.

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May 1, 2015

Xray leads the way in practice

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Team Xray have laid down the early pace at the fourth round of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series in Austria as their drivers filled the top two spots on the time sheets after free practice. Racing at the temporary fahr(T)raum track in Mattsee, it was Bruno Coelho who set the fastest time ahead of team-mate Alexander Hagberg while last year’s winner Ronald Volker completed the Top 3. With low traction the order of the day, Round 3 winner Yannic Prumper would end the four rounds of practice only 6th fastest but for the other of this season’s race winners things faired even worse with Marc Rheinard only managing 20th.

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‘Super good’ was Coelho’s response to how free practice had gone. The Portuguese star, who burst in the title contention in Italy when he finished on the podium, said the big focus has been on getting steering for the low traction. Describing his T4 as ‘now stable’, he said the steering is not perfect but its good and he is happy going into the two rounds of seeding practice. Commenting on the track, this being his first visit to the boards style track, he said the traction was similar to what he would be used to in Portugal, saying it feels ‘like a home race’.

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Hagberg was happy with his early pace on a track he said is ‘definitely not (his) favourite’. The Swede is not a fan of the small size and low traction and while he of course wants to find more steering said for the conditions presented to him his T4 is working very good. In that quest to get more steering he will make some small changes for the first timed practice.

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Volker wasn’t giving away too much information, the reigning champion said things were ‘good so far’ and he would ‘see how controlled practice goes’. The German said while the layout was the same as last year it is quite different to drive this time round due to the new curbing and low traction. The Yokomo driver said the traction has reached a certain point and does look to be getting better adding its never going to get even close to how it was in 2014.

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HB driver Andy Moore would set the fourth fastest time with the British ace quietly upbeat about his practice runs. Having struggled in Italy he said he had a bit of a rethink when he got home and having done some testing in the UK he feels he came here with a good base set-up. Saying it is ‘unusual’ for him he hasn’t changed much on his PRO 5. Commenting on the track he said while the traction is ‘weird’ he said the new curbing and lower white track boards makes the track more forgiving. Team-mate Jilles Groskamp is struggling so far with the Dutch ace at a loss as to why. Having ran Moore’s set-up, the 2012 World Champion said he didn’t like it describing his car as if it was driving on ice. Feeling he is ‘3/10th of the pace’ he said the traction means even small improvements to the feel of the car can make for a big improvement in pace.

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Showing the track is strong for Xray, Marco Kaufmann posted the 5th fastest time ahead Prumper. Breaking his Yokomo in the final free practice after a change to 2-degree tow-in made he car hard to drive, the German said he is still trying to find a suitable set-up for the conditions but he didn’t seem overly concerned by his current pace.

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With Akio Sobue the fastest Tamiya in 7th just behind the Serpent of Viktor Wilck, lead driver Rheinard was at a lose as to why he had lost pace today. While his TRF419 ‘felt OK’ in the two timed free practice rounds yesterday he said this morning its ‘not good’. Asked what the problem was he said for the first seeding practice he would be putting ‘a lot of attention on the tyres’.

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May 1, 2015

Track Focus – fahr(T)raum

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Track Name – fahr(T)raum
Country – Austria
Location – Mattsee
Host – fahr(T)raum
Surface – Asphalt
Direction – Anti-clockwise
No. of ETS Races hosted – 1 (2014)

First appearing on the ETS calendar last year, Round 4 is something unique to the championship. Although classified as an outdoor race, racers don’t have to worry about what the Austrian weather brings during their time in Mattsee as the temporary track is covered by one massive marquee. Taking place in the small town which is situated 20km north of Salzburg, the race is hosted by fahr(T)raum, a museum that pays homage to Porsche car company founder Ferdinand Porsche and bringing the race here came about following a request from Porsche’s grandson Ernst Piech. A keen modeller himself, Piech wanted to bring a modelling event to the museum he set-up to tell the story of his grand father and putting the idea to Michael Klausner who owns the MK Racing model shop in Salzburg this is now the second year over 250 drivers have travelled from around the World to go racing on what is normally the museum’s split level car park – the track on the lower level overlooked by the pits.

The biggest improvement made following the inaugural running of the event 12-months ago is now instead of separate marquees for the pits and the track the entire ETS set-up is housed in one extremely large marquee. If just building such a ‘tent’ was not a big enough challenge, the hill side split level it covers meant that the supporting legs on one the top side of the hill had to be specially modified just for this event. In terms of the track, the layout very similar to last year, the black plastic track boards have been replaced with wood – the majority of it painted white after visibility issues last year – and new plastic curbing. Originally manufactured by a Japanese company for use in constructing drift track, the curbing which has been screw fixed to the asphalt is proving popular with drivers as riding them doesn’t unsettle the cars.

April 12, 2015

Prumper ends 3-year winning hiatus in Italy

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Yannic Prumper ended a 3-year winning hiatus today when he headed a Yokomo 1-2 on the return of the Euro Touring Series to Italy. Last winning an ETS encounter in 2012 when he took victory at the season finale in Traiskirchen, the German claimed his third ever ETS win today in Riccione thanks to his A1 winning race time. Going into the third A-Main as one of three drivers who could take the overall win, second would secure him the top step in the podium, his A1 time giving him the tie break over A2 winner Meen Vejrak. Vejrak’s ETS first podium finish, the first asphalt race of Season #8 would also see Xray’s Bruno Coelho claim his first podium of the championship, the exciting Portuguese driver gaining a lot of new supporters with his efforts over the weekend. For defending champion Ronald Volker the event would end a 15-race, 3-year, run of podium finishes for the Yokomo driver as he finished 4th overall. Top Qualifier in Italy, the bonus point for pole position means with half the season complete Volker still maintains his lead in the points standings.

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‘Finally after 3-years of being so close its worked out’, said a very happy Prumper. Starting from third on the grid behind Volker and Coelho, the 21-year-old said while he had no idea why his Muchmore powered BD7 was better than the previous two mains he also ‘got lucky when Bruno had a slide at the beginning (of the race)’. Allowing him through to second on the opening lap, Prumper would hold position until a recovering Coelho attempted a pass on the penultimate lap but contact would result in a body tuck yet again scuppering an exciting climax to the race. With a body tuck also ruining the prospect of a great battle between Volker and Coelho in A1 maybe its time the structure of bodyshells needs to be looked at. On the final lap Coelho would let Prumper resume position, the winner complimenting his competitor afterwards for showing ‘great sportsmanship’. Putting him right in the championship hunt as he sits just one point off Volker, Prumper said he is already looking forward to Round 4 in Mattsee in three weeks time pointing out it was a strong track for him last year as he made Volker work hard for the win there.

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Happy to claim his first ETS podium finish and be part of a Yokomo 1-2, Vejrak was at the same time a little frustrated he never got the chance to race with his team-mate for the overall win in A3. Starting fourth behind Prumper, an out of shape Coehlo would make contact with his BD7 sending him off the track and back to last. Setting the fastest lap of A3 he said while his car was ‘really good’ the time lost on the first lap was too much to make up. His first ETS outing of the 2014/15 season, the 2012 Nitro Touring Car World Champion said the weekend has shown he has made a big step forward with driving the Yokomo. With the result putting him in the mix in terms of the overall championship he confirmed he will now contest the rest of the ETS season.

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Struggling in A3, having had one of the strongest cars over the opening laps of the previous two mains, Coelho said his T4 was ‘super strange’ for the closing race adding that the crash with Volker on the last lap of A2 must have broken broken something as he ran the same set-up. Although the weekend still marked the championship newcomer’s first podium finish, he said ‘it is disappointing to know you have the best car and when all is perfect others prevent you from doing your job’. While the 21-year-old said he doesn’t really know what to expect at the next round in Austria, the event run on rather unique track, he will prepare the best he can and see what happens.

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With ‘nothing to win or lose’, Volker switched cars for A3 saying they decided after struggling in the early laps of A1 & 2 to go with his second BD7 and ‘just give it a shot’. The 11-time ETS race winner said the car was better with it have ‘good rear traction’ from the start adding the set of tyres & weather, it much hotter for A3, may have contributed to the improvement. Describing his 4th overall as ‘lucky’, given the previous mains, he said the result was a copy of his arch rival Rheinard’s when the Tamiya driver TQ’d but ended up fourth in the final. Happy for his two team-mate’s success, the four time back to back champion said today’s result throws the championship wide open. He continued with ‘Yannic as well as Bruno and Vejrak now contenders I think its going to create a lot of interest in the rest of the season’. Having come to Italy joint leader of the championship Marc Rheinard would finish 5th overall a result that drops the Tamiya driver to third in the standings 2-points behind Prumper.

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Also decided in A3 was the Formula A-Main. Having messed up the start in A1, recovering to finish 2nd and then having a bad A2, Top Qualifier David Ehrbar would win A3 to give Serpent’s F110 SF2 its first overall ETS victory. Behind the German, A2 winner Martin Hofer would claim 2nd overall for Yokomo while Italy’s Michele Romagnoli, who took A1, would complete the podium. With defending champion Marek Cerny wrapping up the Pro Stock win in A2, the third final would see Hofer win to finish runner-up. Surprising everyone when he TQ’d the opening qualifier Team C’s Johannes Sperr capped off a great weekend as he completed the podium at Road Race Riccione RC Circuit Marco Simoncelli.

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