Euro Touring Series

July 14, 2018

Coelho claims 5th TQ of ETS Season

Bruno Coelho has claimed his 5th overall TQ of the season at the Yokomo Euro Touring Series season finale in Slovakia. Having already successfully defended his ETS title at the previous round in Apeldoorn, the Xray driver wrapped up the overall TQ at Hudy Arena in somewhat impressive style. Having led a 1-2 for his team in both qualifier’s yesterday, Q3 would see him spin off towards the end of the straight and need to be marshalled after ending up on the grass. Despite dropping 3-seconds as a result of the second lap incident, he could still recover from the lost time and top the round from by almost two seconds from Marc Rheinard who was the next fastest driver in the top heat. Overall for the round it would be Viktor Wilck, running in the second fastest heat which had the benefit of slightly less sunny conditions, who would finish P2 ahead of Rheinard with Ronald Volker fourth – 3rd to 6th for the round covered by less than 3/10ths.

Explaining his off, Coelho said, ‘I had a body tuck which caught the tyre and I spun out. I think maybe it (the body tuck) was from the wind. Luckily I didn’t crash and hit anything’. He continued, ‘the car felt very good and that is why I continued. I pushed maximum to get back to the point so it worked out perfect’. Describing his car as ‘amazing’, the Portuguese ace said, ‘today we prove it again how good our car is. It is not just because it is our home track. We did the same in Apeldoorn and I had never been there before. I’m lucking forward to the finals’.

‘Not bad, just a clean run’, was Wilck’s reaction to his P2 run adding ‘yesterday would have been a good run but I rolled on the curb’. Using up his third and final set of tyres, the Swede said, ‘maybe I got lucky the last heat had more sun than us but the times are very close for the second group at least’ – this a reference to Xray and in particular Bruno’s huge advantage over the rest of the Modified field. Sitting third in the qualification ranking behind the two Xray’s but with no new tyres for the final qualifier, the Serpent driver concluded, ‘I just have to wait and see because Yannic (Prumper) and Akio (Sobue) still have new sets (of tyres)’.

Rheinard summed up his best run so far by saying, ‘at least I’m now in the A-Main’. The Infinity driver, who is the only other driver to register a TQ this season when he took pole at the opening round, continued, ‘everyone has the same speed on new tyres except Bruno. He goes 3-seconds on the grass and still takes it by 2-seconds. They have found something on new tyres’. Holding fifth on the grid but also using up his third set if tyres, the German said, ‘I guess I will drop some spots (in the final grid order) but the guys with new tyres have to finish the run so lets see what happens’.

Another driver posting his best qualifying so far, Volker said, ‘I could have been better. It is very close between P3 and P6 and fourth is surely not what I wanted’. The Yokomo driver continued, ‘I was on used tyres in Q2 so for the hot weather today I have 2-times new tyres which should be to my advantage. I can still go P3 on the grid but it will be difficult’.

Setting the fifth fastest time, Michal Orlowski said, ‘I didn’t have a very good start. I had a rough first lap but then I was able to put in good laps. I had a couple more bad laps and overshot the carrousel so I’m glad to get 5th’. A driver who is nowadays better known as one of the best electric offroad racers in the World and who is double champion of the Euro Offroad Series, the Pole continued, ‘I should be in the A-Main and I still have one set of tyres for the last one so maybe I can go up the grid’.

Having his worst qualifying run so far, Krapp took full responsibility for the performance summing up Q3 with ‘shit driving, I threw away 3rd’. The Yokomo driver continued, ‘the car is actually ok but the Xray is in a different World. Bruno was in front of me (after his off) and pulled away. I felt like a beginner. My focus now is to be best of the rest’.

In Pro Stock Nico Catelani would become the third different driver to top the times. His first outdoor ETS of the season, the Italian Xray driver was quickest from the Awesomatix of Olivier Bultynck with Jan Ratheisky third. Having taken the opening qualifier Alexandre Duchet ran a P4 time to remain in provisional pole. In Formula Bultynck continued to reign as he wrapped up the overall TQ with another heat win. Behind the Shepherd driver, Matej Dobnikar set the second fastest time with Britain Luke Lee third. Christian Drießle livened up the 40+ title fight as he took Q3 as championship points leader Thomas Oehler hit trouble and was a DNF. The other title contender, Beni Stutz also got a DNF for the round.

View complete event results here.

View the event image gallery here.

July 13, 2018

Another for Xray in Q2 at ETS finale

The first official day of action at the season finale of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series in Slovakia has ended with another dominant display from Xray as their two star drivers repeated the 1-2 result of the opening qualifier. Q2 again saw Bruno Coelho go quickest ahead of Alexander Hagberg however this time the TQ chase was a little more interesting as a third of the way into the qualifier Coelho had a bit of moment on the curbing. While this put Hagberg to the top, Coelho was able to recover the time and at the end of the 5-minutes the separation was almost 6/10ths. In what the other manufacturers are themselves referring to ‘the battle for best of rest’, it was Akio Sobue who set the 3rd fastest time from Q1’s best of the rest Christopher Krapp. Over 3-seconds off Coelho’s pace, Sobue’s Infinity had just 2/100th of an advantage over Krapp’s Yokomo with Yannic Prumper and Freddy Sudhoff rounding out the Q2 Top 6.

Reacting to the qualifier, Coelho, ‘It was very good yes but it was windy so at the start I was very careful. I then pulled away from Alex but hit the curb and touched the grass and he could catch me but I was able to pull away again. I don’t know what else to say, it has been a very good day’.

Hagberg said, ‘my car was even better this time. The track was also better which suited the car better’. The British based Swede added, ‘I realised I was very close to Bruno but got over ambitious and pushed over the limit but it a good result and I am looking forward to tomorrow’.

Sobue said a combination of a cooler track than in Q1 and a ‘small set-up change’ improved his car. The Japanese driver continued, ‘it still pushed but it was better than before and now I need to think about what we do for tomorrow. I need one more good run’. Admitting doing anything about Xray’s pace would be a tall order he said the challenge for everyone else is the not just finding the right set-up but how to adapt for the constantly changing track conditions.

‘I’m a bit disappointed when I see the gap to Xray and I disappointed just to miss out to Akio’, was Krapp’s thoughts after Q2. The ETS Madrid podium finisher said, ‘Again I went a bit wrong with set-up. The track changed again but not as I expected and there was not that much grip’. He continued, ‘It looks now like we are battling for the best of the rest but we will still try to find something for tomorrow to catch them (Xray)’. Asked where he felt Xray’s advantage lay, he replied, ‘they know exactly what to do for the track conditions and we just don’t have that knowledge. We did have the same conditions in practice yesterday but maybe we will be able to benefit from what we learned today in the final two qualifiers’.

On his P5 run, Prumper said, ‘I messed it up again on my own. I flipped on the 2nd lap and again on the 5th and lost 1-second. The car is quite good. It’s hard to drive but it’s fast’. He continued, ‘unfortunately at their home track Xray are too strong but it would be crazy if they weren’t strong here. Maybe tomorrow everyone else can improve’.

‘Finally no mistake’, was Sudhoff’s reaction to his Top 6 time. The Awesomatix driver said, ‘in the first one I spun and lost 1-second so this time I took it easy to get a safe 5-minute run. The car is very balanced and easy to drive. It has a little understeer but I just adapt my driving for this. I have a 6th and a 9th so another Top 6 tomorrow would be good’. Topping the second fastest heat group, Viktor Wilck posted a P7 run behind Sudhoff.

In the Scorpion Power Formula class there would also be a repeat TQ with Olivier Bultynck again putting his Shepherd at the top from Jan Ratheisky. In the Xray Pro Stock second qualifier, Tim Benson just outpaced Ratheisky by half a second to TQ the round with the Top 3 completed by the Q1 topping Alexandre Duchet. The Infinity 40+ class, Thomas Oehler doubled up with another TQ run, this time ahead of ETS returnee Francesco Martini with Apeldoorn winner Beni Stutz third.

View complete event results here.

View the event image gallery here.

July 13, 2018

Chassis Focus – Simon Lauter

Chassis – Tamiya TRF 103
Motor – Scorpion Power System (handout)
ESC – Scorpion Power System (handout)
Batteries – LRP Graphene 2 5800
Tires – Volante (handout)
Radio/Servo – Sanwa/SRT
Bodyshell – Gonzo ODP

Remarks – Again running well here at the Hudy Arena, having had a great outing at the previous round in Apeldoorn where he took the TQ and finished 2nd overall, Simon is running Tamiya’s latest Formula car almost as it comes out of the box. The only change he is made to the car is to run optional aluminium steering hubs which were released for a previous model. He said the main reason for running these is they give him great adjustment options and a better overall fit. With the Formula cars having a new rear tyre from Volante this weekend, he said the extra grip they offer is working more in the favour of the other brands of cars as the Tamiya already had good traction with the previous tyre.

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July 13, 2018

Video – Modified Qualifying Rd1

July 13, 2018

Coelho from Hagberg in opening ETS Slovakia qualifier

Bruno Coelho has taken the opening round of qualifying at the Yokomo Euro Touring Series in Slovakia. The Xray driver lead a 1-2 for his team topping the times ahead of team-mate Alexander Hagberg and was the only driver to run 18 laps of the Hudy Arena track. While Coelho’s pace was expected, the start of qualifying produced a marked improvement from Hagberg who just scraped into the top heat with only the 10 fastest seeding time. With temperatures rising for the first qualifier, it much warmer than in the earlier controlled practice runs and drivers reporting track conditions changed a lot, it was to be Christopher Krapp who stepped up as best of the rest ahead of Yokomo team-mate Yannic Prumper. Running in the second fastest heat, Viktor Wilck enjoyed a P5 run with Marc Rheinard completing the Top 6 as the best Infinity driver.

Coelho said, ‘Everything was ok but like I told you before the wind might become a problem and that time it was. I think it will get worse for the next one’. With the day set to end at around 19:00 local with Q2, he continued, ‘I didn’t take any risk at the start because the car was a little loose and I saw Ronald and Akio each had a mistake. After some safe laps I then started to push a little more over the run. Having already secured the Season #11 ETS title at the previous round in the Netherlands, he said his set-up was probably not best suited to the warmer Q1 conditions. He added, ‘I drive with ARS which maybe was not the best in these conditions but it makes the car more difficult and I prefer it like this’.

Explaining his performance gain for qualifying , Haberg said, ‘We improved the car from practice by adapting the set-up to suit my driving better. Now it is a more personal set-up rather than a team set-up’. The Swede continued, ‘we will try to continue in that direction with the set-up but I am hopeful there is more to come from my car’.

‘It was a good Q1 despite my problem in CP2’, was Krapp’s reaction to the opening qualifier. He said, ‘the conditions are completely different. We didn’t practice in hot conditions like this so I am happy with the result but the car had too much steering now and the rear end was loose so now we need to try get more rear grip. Having been the fastest Yokomo in seeding with the 3rd fastest time, Ronald Volker’s opening qualifier netted a P7. The World Champion said, ‘I almost spun on the first lap. We changed the car for the hotter conditions but it was hard to judge how much it was going to change but I expected to be more competitive’.

Prumper said, ‘the track changed a lot, there was more heat and I started with the car feeling quite loose. It got better over the run but I had a mistake a that left me with an 18.1-second lap after I made a mistake but 4th is OK’. Asked about changing the car for Q2 he replied, ‘It will cool down for the qualifier later so I will keep the car the same but tomorrow it is hot so we need to work on set-up for that.’

‘Just a safe run’, was how Wilck summed up Q1. The Serpent driver continued, ‘I changed to a hard roll centre spring to get the car more stable. It was very stable but not that fast. Still I was able to get an ok run and was close to Chrissy’. The Swede also felt his heat was more effected by the weather saying, ‘the sun was out for half of our run and for the top heat they had clouds back’. Asked about Q2, he said, ‘I think I might just make a small change to the car but I want to get one more run to make sure I’m in the final’.

‘I lost some spots on the last lap because I had a bad lap’, was Rheinard’s reaction to Q1 as he walked back to his pits. The last non Xray driver to win at the Hudy Arena, he added, ‘the car is difficult to drive it doesn’t feel grippy enough and gets worse and worse over the run. I don’t know what to do’. Team-mate Akio Sobue, who was second fastest in seeding, said, ‘I went back to the same spring I used to set my time in CP1 but I had no steering and I don’t know why’.

In Pro Stock, former Champion Alexandre Duchet took the opening qualifier ahead of Olivier Bultynck by a decent 1.7-second margin while Duchet’s Xray team-mate Tom Krägefski was 3rd 1/10th of a second back on the Awesomatix. In Formula, Bultynck was able to put his Shepherd at the top ahead of this season’s champion Jan Ratheisky with the Tamiya of Simon Lauter completing the Top 3. The only ETS title yet to be decided, in the 40+ class the first TQ went to Thomas Oehler ahead of title rival Beni Stutz and Christian Stöckl.

View complete event results here.

View the event image gallery here.

July 13, 2018

Chassis Focus – Andreas Stiebler

Chassis – Hawx F1 18
Motor – Scorpion Power System (handout)
ESC – Scorpion Power System (handout)
Batteries – Sunpadow 6000mAh
Tires – Volante (handout)
Radio/Servo – Sanwa/SRT
Bodyshell – Bittydesign Type R

Remarks – New in the pits this weekend at the ETS Season Finale is the Hawx F1 18 chassis being driven by Andreas Stiebler. The Austrian has been involved in the testing and engineering of the car which is being produced by Kroni RC. Putting the car in the Top heat of qualifying here at the Hudy Arena, the car has already racked up some good results with Andreas taking it to the Austrian National title and finishing on the podium at the recent European Championships. The main design feature of the car is the full length chassis plate with the rear pod mounted above this. Andreas said this design makes the car more stable on bumpier tracks as well as over curbing.

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July 13, 2018

Coelho top seed at ETS Finale

Bruno Coelho is the top seed for qualifying at the season finale of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series in Slovakia. The Xray driver took full ‘home advantage’ to set the fastest 3-consecutive laps in both rounds of practice, improving by almost 3/10ths in the second run. Behind him Infinity’s Akio Sobue was best of the rest with his first time very close to that of Coelho but he would be slower on his second attempt. Newly crowned European Champion Ronald Völker would post the 3rd fastest time, the Yokomo driver however also unable to better his opening pace in the final practice. Overall it was a strong practice for the Yokomo team with Christopher Krapp fourth quickest while Yannic Prumper completed the Top 6. In between them was Schumacher’s Michal Orlowski, the British manufacturer also showing well with Elliott Harper also in the top qualifying heat after putting in the 7th fastest time ahead of Marc Rheinard.

‘It’s going very good. As normal here our car wells very well and we just had to make only small changes’, was Coelho’s reaction after practice. Winner of the event for the last three years running, he continued, ‘Also the wind is no problem today and I hope it will be like this for the next two days also. Sometimes there can be a wind that is a problem because of the high speed straight and because we have to turn a little towards the end its can cause problems’. The Portuguese driver concluded, ‘the car looks fast on the first 3-laps and is very stable for the 5-minutes. The drop off is not so much and it is only really over the last two laps’.

Sobue was pleased with his early form but having changed the car for the final practice he will go back for Q1, the opening two rounds of the four scheduled qualifiers taking place this evening. The Japanese driver said, ‘I changed to a hard front spring for the final practice and it was not so good so I will go back for qualifying’. With the team struggling with drop off at the previous round in Apeldoorn, he is confident things will be better here saying, ‘I think for 5-minute we will be ok too’. Team-mate Rheinard opted to run his car without ARS in controlled practice and didn’t like how the rear of his car felt. Having shown good pace in the final free practice when he was second fastest behind Coelho, the 2014 Hudy Arena race winner said, ‘the car was really good in free practice 7 so I will go back to what I ran then’.

Summing up his practice, Volker said, ‘I struggled a bit in free practice because I couldn’t get the RTC (ARS) to work so I opted to go to standard suspension for controlled practice and I improved my pace and position’. The World Champion continued, ‘Overall I am still not happy with the balance and I think the diff was too hard in the last one so I will go back to a softer one for qualifying’. He concluded, ‘Bruno is quite quick but Yannic has a very good average lap time so it is looking promising for Q1’.

‘It was going pretty good but I had a huge crash in the second (controlled) practice. Something strange happened on the first lap and I flew off at the end of the straight’, explained Krapp at the end of the practice. The German continued, ‘I hit the fence and nothing big is broken but I still need to fix it which is not ideal before the first qualifier’. Setting his fourth fastest time for the round he did complete, he said, ‘the first 2-3-minutes is ok but then it drops of quite a bit. I couldn’t test the changes in the second controlled practice so I will just fix the car and see how it is in Q1’.

Better known for his exploits as Schumacher’s star of the Euro Offroad Series, Orlowski said, ‘It is going good since the first practice. We did some changes at the beginning but since then the car has been the same’. The Polish driver added, ‘I think there is small differences between the sets of tyres and I didn’t have the best set in the last one. The car felt different to the previous run’. He concluded, ‘both cars are in the Top 10 so I’m feeling pretty confident for the weekend’.

Prumper said, ‘My car is pretty good and I have a really good 5-minute pace. The first 3-laps are not the best but my pace is fast and consistent for the rest of the run so I’m pretty confident for qualifying’. Having tested Yokomo’s ARS system, the German said ‘it was the same’ in terms of laps times but without it his car ‘felt easier to drive’.

View complete event results here.

View the event image gallery here.

July 13, 2018

Track Focus – Hudy Racing Arena

Name – Hudy Racing Arena
Country – Slovakia
Location – Trencin (120km NE from capital city of Bratislava)
Host – Hudy/Xray
Surface – Asphalt
Direction – Anti-clockwise
No. of ETS Races hosted – 5
Previous Winners –Bruno Coelho (2015, 16, 17), Marc Rheinard (2014), Ronald Volker (2013)

Hosting the Euro Touring Series for a sixth consecutive season, the World famous Hudy Arena in Slovakia still brings about a sense of ‘amazing’ as you approach the entrance. First opening its doors to international racing when it hosted its first ETS event in 2013, the facility is the home of the Xray/Hudy brands. The factory that produces all their products is on the left side while indoor race track together with huge pit area and restaurant are on the right. A 25,000 square feet facility, in between the joined buildings is the outdoor asphalt track, on which all the ETS action takes place, with the Arena’s most recent addition of an indoor dirt offroad track next to it. A 320 metre long asphalt circuit, which got new and much welcomed lower curbing ahead of last year, the only difference for racers this year is the positioning of the timing loop Previously the loop was in the hairpin before the section in front of the drivers stand but now the counting loop is position in the short straight section before the corner which should prevent drivers launching their cars at the finish line.

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