August 5, 2011

Bloomfield TQ’s penultimate qualifier

Darren Bloomfield

Team Losi Racing’s Darren Bloomfield has TQ’d the penultimate round of qualifying at the EFRA 1:8 Offroad Championship setting a new overall fastest time for the Sand-am-Main track.  In the last group to run their fourth qualifier, the Warm-up race runner-up denied Mugen a 1-2-3 result by running a 10/5:01.309 pace ahead of Daniel Reckward, Marscel Guske and Q1 pace setter Simon Willetts.

Not lacking in self confidence, Bloomfield said the 5-minute run was the best he had driven all week and he always knew he had the speed to pull off a TQ run.  Feeling the track is coming more and more to him, the result moves the 22-year-old to second in the qualification ranking behind Jérôme Aigoin.  Running AKA Grid Iron on his Nitrotec powered TLR 8ight, the British Champion said he might try iBeam in the final qualifier to help the buggy go through the bumps better but other than that the plan is to just ‘go for it again’.

Reckward

Reckward was delighted with both his and his Mugen/RB team-mate Guske’s performance.  Switching to the same diff set-up as used by Guske to take second in Q3 yesterday, Reckward said his MBX-6 was ‘fantastic’ with the switch to heavier oils making the buggy more stable over the stones.  Setting the fastest lap of the round, Guske had the potential for a TQ run but lost 4-seconds with a mistake on lap 3.  Running RB’s new tyres Reckward said they may use the fifth & final round to test for the first time the French company’s Mini Pin pattern.

Willetts

Topping the difficult conditions of the opening round of qualifying, Willetts was happy with his run to fourth in Q4.  The Brit, said a mistake at the Double up the hill, which forced him to take it single/single, lost him some time as did traffic near the end of the run.  Running the same set-up on his Orion powered MBX-6 as yesterday he said the Double is becoming ‘make or break’ as you must be on the right line out of the previous corner up to hill to have enough track to clear the double.

Jerome Sartel

A finalist in Portugal last year driving for Xray, Jerome Sartel took his Agama to the fifth fastest time. The French driver said his Bullitt powered Evo A8 has been good throughout qualifying but this was the first time he was able to pull together a mistake free run.  Running VP-Pro Axman tyres, changing only the compound to suit the conditions at the time of each run, he said he has had to do little with his set-up and the focus is now on keeping his driving clean.

Elliot Boots

Fastest of the Team Durango drivers, Elliott Boots was on a very fast run until Jérôme Aigoin made a mistake in which he got caught up in.  Costing him about 2.5 seconds, the 17-year-old eventually took sixth but his team where happy with his driving and feel they have a very good ‘finals’ car.  One of the stars of this year’s European B Championships, young German Mugen driver Dominic Bauer enjoyed his best run, a change to Proline Hole Shot tyres giving him the traction he was missing in the earlier qualifiers.

Topping Q2 & 3, Aigoin had a ‘difficult’ fourth round.  Admitting to being a little stressed he said his Kyosho was great in the warm-up but once the timing started he just made too many mistake all of which were his own doing. 17th fastest it was to be his worst round.

Round 4 Qualifying – Top 12
1. Darren Bloomfield – TLR/Nitrotec – 10/5:01.309
2. Daniel Reckward – Mugen/RB – 10/5:04.142
3. Marcel Guske – Mugen/RB – 10/5:05.157
4. Simon Willetts – Mugen/Orion – 10/5:05.924
5. Jérôme Sartel – Agama/Bullitt – 10/5:06.115
6. Elliot Boots – Durango/RB – 10/5:06.130
7. Dominic Bauer – Mugen/Novarossi – 10/5:06.567
8. David Ronnefalk – Kyosho/Orion – 10/5:07.604
9. Neil Cragg – Associated/LRP – 10/5:08.035
10.Lee Martin – Tamiya/OS – 10/5:08.736
11.Jörn Neumann – Durango/Picco – 10/5:08.762
12.Carlos Duraes – Xray/RB – 10/5:09.355

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