Aigoin is Top Qualifier as Guske tops Q5
For the second year in a row the honour of being Top Qualifier at the 1:8 Offroad European Championships has gone to an Aigoin with Jérôme pulling off the feat achieved by his twin brother Yannick in Portugal last year. Only TLR’s Darren Bloomfield and Mugen’s Simon Willetts could deny Aigoin from being Top Qualifier needing to top the fifth & final round of qualifying to do so but it was the surprise of these championship Marcel Guske who took Q5.
Aigion was delighted at claiming his first TQ at the Euros but said he is taking nothing for granted for tomorrow’s finals. The quietly spoken Frenchman expects a tough Semi final saying a lot of drivers showed good speed in the final round of qualifying and he wants to focus on getting past this stage before starting to think of his chances for the 45-minute Main final.
Impressing a lot of onlookers with his pace, little known German racer Guske admitted he was surprised himself at his performance at Sand-am-Main. A podium finisher at last year’s German Nationals, this is the 22-year-old’s first European Championships and he says he never expected to qualify second overall and find himself on pole for a Semi final. Asked what approach he would be taking for the finals Guske said he would ‘just see how it goes’ but with his RB tyres equipped MBX-6 already proving it has the speed he was going to ‘give his best’.
Finishing third overall Bloomfield was on target to record the first 11 lap qualifier but on his penultimate lap he messed up loosing almost 7-seconds. Shrugging off the incident the top TLR driver said after qualifying that his 8ight was the best it has been and liking the bumpy track he has no doubts about tomorrow saying he is going to win his Semi.
Another driver to be on target for 11 laps in Q5 until he made a mistake on his final lap, Daniel Reckward qualifies 4th. A three time winner of the European Championship and a former World Champion, the German said his Mugen which is identical to that of Guske had great speed while also being quite safe to drive. Opting to try RB’s Scorpion tyre in the final qualifier while Guske stuck with the Dragon pattern Reckward said he felt the former offered slightly better traction. A mentor to Guske since he joined the Mugen/RB team two years ago, Reckward said it was fantastic to see his driver do so well and he feels they both have the potential to do well tomorrow.
Despite not yet living up to the pre-event hype that he would be the man to beat around the Sand-am-Main track, Warm-up race winner Robert Batlle appeared a lot happier at the end of qualifying. Struggling yesterday, the Mugen ace qualifies 5th overall but having found a set-up that was more to his liking today he is now pretty confident of having a good Semi.
Setting himself the target of qualifying in the Top 10, Willetts said he was ‘well happy’ with sixth. Taking the top spot in the opening qualifier The British driver said he drove too conservatively today but says he has the equipment to progress from the Semi to his first ever Main final.
Current European Junior Champion David Ronnefalk matched his 2010 qualifying result by taking 7th. After bad results in his opening two heats the 15-year-old said the end result was ‘good enough’. Admitting to making too many ‘stupid’ mistakes the talented Swede said his Orion powered Kyosho is good enough to be competitive in the final and he just needs to cut out the mistakes and drive it.
Claiming his best run in the final round of heats with the fifth fastest time, Elliot Boots is the highest placed Durango driver in the Semis having qualified his RB powered DNX408 in eighth, the position in which he finished the Euros final last year.
Third fastest in Q3, Team Xray’s Teemu Leino ended his qualifying on a high as he claimed second in Q5 after pulling off his first error free run. The Finn qualifies 9th overall and says his buggy is working well but thinks the biggest concern for tomorrow is going to be the weather.
For last year’s Top Qualifier Yannick Aigoin it has been a tough few days. The former champion said they have made a lot of changes to the set-up on his nVision power TLR 8ight but they haven’t been able to get it right for the track conditions. Qualifying 11th behind his team-mate Martin Bayer he said he hopes tomorrow things will get better. Completing the Top 16, Jérôme Sartel, Carsten Keller, Ignacio Candel, Neil Cragg and Carlos Keller secure themselves a direct starting spot in the all important Semi Finals.
Chasing a fourth consecutive European title Renaud Savoya will have to start his defence from the 1/4 Finals, his lowest qualifying position since he made his Euros debut in 2005. Incidentally that race was also held in German and he also started in the 1/4 Finals. The Durango/RB driver said they got the buggy easier and easier to drive each heat but in the end it was too slow. Going back to the set-up they started out with on Tuesday he said it should have the speed to progress up the finals and its up to him to keep it on four wheels.
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