Euro Touring Series Rd6 – Sunday Action
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Video – Modified, Pro Stock & Formula A-main 2
Rheinard takes victory at ETS Finale
Marc Rheinard has taken victory at the season finale of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series at the Hudy Racing Arena, giving the championship’s most winning manufacturer Tamiya their first & only win of the 2013/14 championship. Having not won in the world famous championship for over a season, the most winning driver claimed his 12th victory as he backed up his A1 win with a dominant performance in A2, helped hugely by his TRF team-mate Viktor Wilck. Despite having the slowest car on the track, the number 2 starting Wilck managed to keep a train of cars behind him for the entire five minutes allowing Rheinard to pull clear for an easy 3.6 second winning margin. The battle for second was an impeccable display of world class driving as despite their close proximity and high speeds of the cars there was no contact. With the top 4 finishing in the order which they started with Ronald Volker 3rd and Alexander Hagberg 4th, World Champion Jilles Groskamp was the highest place finisher to make a pass again getting by the Yokomo of Yannic Prumper for 5th.
After one of his toughest ETS seasons, Rheinard was ‘maximum happy’ to maintain his record of being the only driver to win a race every season for the last 6 years of the championship. The 3-time World Champion was quick to pay tribute to Tamiya who he said have really worked hard recently on making their car competitive in particular against the Yokomo of ETS Champion Ronald Volker. He said ‘In Luxembourg we were close and today we were best which shows we are headed in good direction now with the car’. A World Championship year, Tamiya 3 time back to back defending champions, he said ‘now that we know we have a competitive car we can focus on testing to improve it more’. Commenting on A2, he said having not been so happy with his Much More powered prototype TRF418 in the opening Main the car was now perfect again the only change made being a new set of tyres. Repeating his fast get away from the line he said he could immediately see Wilck was ‘slower’ and he was easily able to extend the gap adding he could have without much effort pushed a lot harder he had needed to.
Wilck said with the train of cars behind him, the group containing at one point 6-cars running noise to tail, he thought it was all going to end up with someone crashing into him as he was so slow. Lacking steering so much so that he had to lift for the straight left hand kick he complimented Volker on his driving saying ‘Ronald really took care’. No idea as to why the car was so slow he said he hoped it was maybe due to the set of tyres he had. While he will fit a fresh set of tyres for A3 as he hopes to win the leg and make it a Tamiya 1-2 on the podium he said they will also make some small set-up changes.
‘5-minutes of driving behind a tank’, that was the wording Volker used to sum up the race. Really happy with changes made to the set-up of his LRP powered BD7 between legs, he said he couldn’t show its potential as he just couldn’t find a way passed Wilck who had ‘no pace’. The 4-time back to back champion said the problem was compounded further by how close the cars behind him where meaning he couldn’t even attempt to take a risk in trying to get by the Tamiya. Saying a mistake was his only opportunity, he said Wilck blocked well and didn’t put a wheel wrong despite the pressure adding it was great to see 5 cars running so close at such high speeds and keep it clean. Looking to A3 when he has the potential to take second overall with a win, he said he hoped he would get the chance to show the potential of his car.
Asked about his race Hagberg said ‘Viktor (Wilck) was very slow for some reason and nobody could get by one another and it was simple as that’. Enjoying running so closely with his rivals he said it was a great showcase for racing at the highest level and he had a lot of respect for all the drivers involved.
Groskamp said he almost threw away the race off the line as his Tamiya attempted to do a doughnut. Changing from doing one and a half warm-up laps for A2 he just did half a lap while making his way to the line which he said obviously wasn’t enough for his tyres. The start allowed team-mate Akio Sobue passed but the Dutch ace said his car was really good and he was able to catch back up. He said staring 6th from the grid he always knew it was going to be difficult to get a good result as was seen by the train battling for second spot but he was ‘super happy for Tamiya that they are back winning in the ETS’, a championship Groskamp has won twice for the Japanese company.
In the Xray Pro-Stock class Marek Cerny also made it two from two but for the Czech driver the result not only gave him a home win for his Xray team but also allowed him to successfully defend his title. Re-igniting his title hopes with a win at the previous ETS encounter in Luxembourg, Cerny needed to TQ and win the season finale and not putting a wheel wrong all weekend he did just that. Repeating his domination of A1, Cerny would again win A2 comfortably over fellow Xray drivers David Nemcek and Kuba Simurda.
Ride Modified A-Main Leg 2 Result
1.(1) Marc Rheinard (DE) – Tamiya Racing Factory – 17/5:05.460
2.(2) Viktor Wilck (SE) – Tamiya Racing Factory – 17/5:09.055
3.(3) Ronald Volker (DE) – Team Yokomo – 17/5:09.247
4.(4) Alexander Hagberg (SE) – Xray Racing Team – 17/5:09.455
5.(6) Jilles Groskamp (NL) – Tamiya Racing Factory – 17/5:09.841
6.(5) Yannic Prumper (DE) – Team Yokomo – 17/5:10.804
7.(8) Loic Jasmin (FR) – Team Yokomo – 17/5:11.043
8.(9) Viljami Kutvonen (FI) – Awesomatix – 17/5:19.338
9.(10)Alessio Menicucci (IT) – Xray Racing Team – 16/5:02.735
10.(7)Akio Sobue (JP) – Tamiya Racing Factory – 16/5:02.981
Xray Pro-Stock A-Main Leg 2 Result
1.(1) Marek Cerny (CZ) – Xray – 15/5:00.302
2.(3) David Nemcek (SK) – Xray – 15/5:02.500
3.(2) Kuba Simurda (CZ) – Xray – 15/5:03.126
4.(4) Jan Ratheisky (DE) – Xray – 15/5:03.765
5.(5) Henrik Heitsch (DE) – ARC – 15/5:09.114
6.(10)Mike Gosvig (DK) – Awesomatix – 15/5:16.078
7.(6) Tobias Seidl (DE) – Team C – 15/5:16.159
8.(7) Kevin Homburg (DE) – ARC – 15/5:17.242
9.(9) Mustafa Alp (TR) – VBC Racing – 15/5:19.373
10.(8)Philip Tschupp (CH) – Serpent – 15/5:20.984
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Video – Modified, Pro Stock & Formula A-main 1
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.
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‘From Race Control’ – Day 3, Finals
Today is not just Day 3 at the Hudy Racing Arena, in Slovakia but it is also the final day of Season #7 of the ETS. A year that has seen a total of 768 individual drivers contest at least one of the championship six rounds, it is a beautiful sunny morning in Trencin for the concluding day with just finals making up the schedule. For the lower main drivers, two finals lie ahead while the A-Main drivers will do battle three times. All of the racing action can be followed live here.
Rheinard is Top Qualifier in Slovakia
Marc Rheinard is the Top Qualifier for the season finale of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series, the 3-time World Champion claiming the honour for the first time in more than a season after he topped the final round of qualifying at the Hudy Racing Arena in Slovakia. Needing a TQ run to deny his Tamiya team-mate Viktor Wilck, who topped Q2 & 3, the pair pushed one another extremely hard over the five minutes until Wilck went for an all or nothing last lap that saw the Swede roll at the end of the straight. Taking the round ahead of this season’s already crowned champion Ronald Volker, Rheinard would end up tied on points but thanks to his fastest Q1 time he would claim his 9th ETS pole position. A weekend that has seen the Tamiya Racing Factory make a huge step forward in performance, Wilck will start second with Jilles Groskamp and Akio Sobue also on the grid making them the best represented manufacturer.
Having been critised for venting his frustration at his car lacking pace in the past, Rheinard was understandably very happy not just with his own performance but that of his team-mates adding that Wilck turned out to be a little faster than he expected in Q4. Describing the run as ‘very close’, the former Champion said starting the heat directly behind Wilck he could see very clearly changes in the gap. After closing in at the start, he said at the end the Swede really brought it on. Asked if he could convert his No.1 qualifying position into his first win of the season, the German said his main goal coming into the weekend was to secure second overall in the championship and that remains the same.
Wilck said while in the end the result was great for Tamiya it would have been nice if he had taken the overall TQ. A Top Qualifier four times previously, he said he lost out at the beginning of the run as he was too slow. Managing to pull back much of the lost time he said he went for it on the last lap but catching the curb at the end of the straight he rolled losing over one & a half seconds. Asked about the final, he said he could do with a little more steering something he hoped engineer Kiyo Suzuki would be able to sort out.
‘Never that happy starting third’ was how Volker summed up his qualifying. The driver with the most number of TQ’s in the championship having started 15 races from the front of the grid, he said today was a tough day. Pulling off in Q2 afterstruggling with his set-up and having a motor issue in Q3, he said having just moved to the top of the time sheets it was driver error that was the problem in the final heat. Clipping a dot half way through the run he would lose over a second & a half. Driving at ‘more than 100%’ he was able to get back a few 1/10th which helped him move from fifth to third on the grid – him winning the tie break with Alexander Hagberg. Happy with how his LRP powered BD7 ran in Q4 he said they may just make some small tweaks adding it will be interesting to see how everyone runs on fresh tyres, A-Main drivers getting a new set of Ride tyres for each of the three legs. Looking to cap off his championship winning season with a win he said his aim for the race was to ‘swap the situation’.
Starting his team’s home race from fourth on the grid, Xray’s Alexander Hagberg is was disappointed at losing out on 3rd. On the opening lap of the qualifier the Swede’s ORCA powered T4 overshot the end of the straight costing him valuable tenths in the extremely closely matched field. He said the car got better lap by lap and in the end it was really fast but it was all ‘too late’. Admitting it will be hard to win from fourth he believes he has a good chance at the podium and due to how close everyone was in qualifying it should be very interesting finals.
Dropping from looking like starting third to ending up 5th, Yannic Prumper said his Yokomo was ‘really good’ for the last qualifier but he ‘just messed it up on my own’. Clipping the curbing and sending his BD7 onto grass on its roof, the mistake left him 23rd for the round. The 20-year-old said the car is there to challenge for the win but the loss of grid position means its going to be ‘harder work tomorrow’.
Completing the Top 6 ahead of team-mate & ETS debutant Sobue, Groskamp said with four cars in the Top 7 and two of the them up front, Tamiya could now say ‘we are back’. He said the greatest thing about today was that Tamiya had shown they are competitive again adding for him the order is fine as getting the team back up to speed in this world championship year was the most important thing. Completing the grid Yokomo’s Loic Jasmin will start 8th, followed by the Awesomatix of last year’s Pro-Stock winner at the Arena Viljami Kutvonen with 9-time national champion Alessio Menicucci becoming the first Italian to make the premiere class A-main at an ETS.
Despite having alreasdy ready wrapped up a very important overall TQ in the Xray Pro-Stock class, defending champion Marek Cerny completed the clean sweep for Xray as he topped Q4 from fellow Czech Xray driver Kuba Simurda who will start second on the grid. Home driver David Nemcek starts third with Cerny’s title rival Jan Ratheisky starting fourth but the pressure is on Cerny as he needs the win to retain his title. In the Formula class, Team Serpent’s driver David Ehrbar claimed his second overall TQ of the season and will start the finals ahead of Olivier Bultynck, the VBC Racing driver having denied Ehrbar the win in Luxembourg.
Ride Modified A-Main Grid
1. Marc Rheinard – Tamiya Racing Factory – 310 pts
2. Viktor Wilck – Tamiya Racing Factory – 310
3. Ronald Volker – Team Yokomo – 305
4. Alexander Hagberg – Xray Racing Team – 305
5. Yannic Prumper – Team Yokomo – 304
6. Jilles Groskamp – Tamiya Racing Factory – 301
7. Akio Sobue – Tamiya Racing Factory – 299
8. Loic Jasmin – Team Yokomo – 298
9. Viljami Kutvonen – Awesomatix – 297
10.Alessio Menicucci – Xray Racing Team – 297
Ride Modified Round 4 Qualifying – Top 10
1. Marc Rheinard – Tamiya Racing Factory – 17/5:10.779
2. Ronald Volker – Team Yokomo – 17/5:11.915
3. Alexander Hagberg – Xray Racing Team – 17/5:11.997
4. Jilles Groskamp – Tamiya Racing Factory – 17/5:12.535
5. Akio Sobue – Tamiya Racing Factory – 17/5:12.658
6. Viktor Wilck – Tamiya Racing Factory – 17/5:12.758
7. Steven Weiss – Xray Racing Team – 17/5:13.807
8. Alessio Menicucci – Xray Racing Team – 17/5:13.838
9. Atsushi Hara – Team Yokomo – 17/5:14.042
10.Viljami Kutvonen – Awesomatix – 17/5:14.697
Xray Pro-Stock A-Main Grid
1. Marek Cerny – Xray – 310 pts
2. Kuba Simurda – Xray – 306
3. David Nemcek – Xray – 306
4. Jan Ratheisky – Xray – 303
5. Henrik Heitsch – ARC – 302
6. Tobias Seidl – Team C – 302
7. Kevin Homburg – ARC – 300
8. Philip Tschupp – Serpent – 297
9. Mustafa Alp – VBC Racing – 297
10.Mike Gosvig – Awesomatix – 297
Xray Pro-Stock Round 4 Qualifying – Top 10
1. Marek Cerny – Xray – 15/5:07.762
2. Kuba Simurda – Xray – 15/5:10.283
3. Henrik Heitsch – ARC – 15/5:10.430
4. Tobias Seidl – Team C – 15/5:10.457
5. Mustafa Alp – VBC Racing- 15/5:11.192
6. Jan Ratheisky – Xray – 15/5:11.899
7. Kevin Homburg – ARC – 15/5:12.667
8. Mike Gosvig – Awesomatix – 15/5:12.904
9. Marco Siegenthaler – Serpent – 15/5:13.552
10.Barnabas Toth – Yokomo – 15/5:13.586
View the complete event results here.
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Euro Touring Series Rd6 – Saturday Action
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