Bloomfield holds overnight TQ in Italy
TLR driver Darren Bloomfield holds the overnight Buggy Top Qualifier honour at the Arena Offroad Meeting in Voghera, Italy, after securing his second TQ run of the day in the third of the four scheduled qualifiers with team-mate Yannick Aigoin the only one capable of denying him in tomorrow morning’s final round of heats.
Bloomfield set the pace in the penultimate qualifier by 2.6 seconds from Aigoin with the third of the TLR National Champions Riccardo Rabitti making it an 8ight 1-2-3 for the round. The British Champion, who has done little to his buggy all day even running all three heats on the same set of Losi green compound Kingpin tyres, said driving the track he feels like he is slow but the time sheets prove that this is not the case. With two TQ runs and a second to his credit there is only an outside chance that Bloomfield will not claim the honour of overall Top Qualifier. With two rounds to count Bloomfield just needs to finish in the Top 5 while 2009 Top Qualifier and race winner Aigoin needs to top the time sheets of the final round.
Switching from Procircuit’s Square Impact in extreme compound to a Super Soft Hot Dice tyre for the third round, Aigoin said the harder compound was not the right way to go. Describing Q3 as clean run, the French Champion said it was good to test the different compound to see how it worked and he can use that information to help with his tyre choices for the rest of the weekend.
Rabitti, who set the fastest lap of qualifying in his third run with a 39.417, said his Picco powered TLR was much better following changes made after Q2. The Italian champion was on target to TQ the round but lost 4 seconds at the final corner of the last lap following a ‘stupid’ mistake. Running AKA super soft compound Impact tyres throughout the day fitting a fresh set for the penultimate qualifier, Rabitti said he will leave the car as is for tomorrow Q4.
Behind the TLR trio Simon Willets was best of the rest. The Mugen driver said his modified MBX-6 continued to feel good but another mistake this time on the last lap when he flipped the Orion powered buggy lost over 3 seconds. Driving for Agama Riccardo Perin had his best run of the day with fifth followed by Elliot Boots who lost a massive 7 seconds on his second lap due to some slow marshalling.
In Truggy, Aigoin completed a hat trick of timesheet topping runs with his nVision powered 8ight T to wrap up the overall TQ honour just as he did here at the Arena in 2009. Also with one final qualifier scheduled for the morning, Italy’s Walter Floris, also driving a TLR, sits second in Truggy with France’s Julien Lattanzio holding third.
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