Wischnewski tops first controlled practice

Continuing his free practice pace Dirk Wischnewski has topped the first round of controlled practice this morning at the 200mm European Championships in Ettlingen, Germany.  The Xray driver set the pace over 7-minutes from Mugen’s Robert Pietsch with Italian teenager Biagio Spataro 3rd.

Wischnewski, who also set the fastest lap with 13.380, said his Orcan powered NT1 felt better than yesterday’s final day of free practice due to this morning’s cooler track conditions.  Using the practice to try his spare engine he said it was slightly too rich but overall he is happy that he is well set-up for qualifying.  Declaring he doesn’t expect to be fastest in CP2, the final practice before this afternoon’s opening qualifier, the 2009 Champion will use the session to run a set of ‘Final’ tyres.

‘Quite Happy’ was how Robert Pietsch summed up his run.  Running close to Wischnewski on track the 1:8 Onroad World Champion said it was possible to see his new MTX-5 was quicker through the right section of the track but that the Xray had the advantage on the left side.  Happy with the feeling of his car he will just make some very fine tuning adjustments to try and make his car better through the section after the main straight.  Pietsch said his pit stops need to improve with Wischnewski gaining about .5 of a second in the pits.

16-year-old Spataro, who was one of the finds of the 2009 European Championships at Gubbio in Italy, used CP1 to run a second engine to ensure he has a good spare should he have any issues with his race engine. Not quite as good as his main engine he said he lost some time during his pitstop as his mechanic checked the engine temperature and adjusted the tuning but overall he is very happy with his pace.  Behind Spataro was another front runner from the Italian National Championship Giorgio De Felici who drives for current champion manufacturer Capricorn.

Fastest Team Shepherd driver with the fifth fastest time was Jilles Groskamp.  The Dutch ace said while his lap times were not ‘spectacular’ his Orion powered Velox V10 was very consistent.  Planning to run different springs in CP2 he said he and his mechanic were a little rusty on the pitstops and this was an area they need to work on.

Completing the Top 6 and just missing out on 31 laps was Xray’s Eric Dankel.  The German National Champion said his Novarossi powered NT1 was not as good as yesterday, the car having developed oversteer.  Making a few driver errors during his run, he said the oversteer resulted in very high tyre wear but he hopes by lowering the rear roll centre the steering should be better for CP2.

Setting the seventh fastest time with 30-laps in 7:02.785 was Team Serpent’s Mark Green followed very closely by top French driver Basile Concialdi at the controls of his Orion powered Capricorn LAB-C01.

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