Volker continues to reign at DHI
Having topped practice and then TQ’d the opening round of qualifying yesterday, Ronald Volker continued his reign at the 14th running of the DHI Cup by kicking off Day 2 of the Danish event by topping the second of the four qualifiers. The Team Yokomo ace took the round once again ahead of Team Xray’s Adrian Berntsen with Serpent’s Marc Fischer completing the Top 3. Exiting the boundaries of the track twice as his Tamiya understeered off the track, Marc Rheinard failed to complete the full 5-minutes.
‘Could not be any better ‘ is how Volker summed up his run which was over 4-seconds faster than his opening qualifying time of last night. His first outing in Europe with Yokomo’s new BD7 2014, he said after traction rolling during his warm-up laps he knew traction was high and so he adjusted his driving accordingly. With no such issues over the 5-minutes he said the car performed perfectly.
Summing up his qualifier as ‘pretty good’, Berntsen said he struggled a little at the start something he is putting down to his tyre preparations. Once the tyres on his T4 2014 came in, the reigning champion said he was very happy & confident with the car allowing him to close the gap to Volker for a time before making a mistake on the final lap which lost him over 1-second. ‘Happy with second’, he plans to change his tyre preparation for Q3 after consultation with his father on what to do differently.
After a error filled run yesterday, Fischer said both his driving and his S411 where better today. Set-up changes made the car better in the early part of the run better but after the 3-minute mark the German once again had to contend with understeer. Describing the run as ‘much cleaner’, for his next run the German will change to a softer front spring as well as switching from LRP to CS tyre additive to evaluate if there is any key difference between the two that might help cure his understeer.
Having reverted to his practice set-up Alexander Hagberg was a little happier this morning as he took his ORCA powered Xray to the fourth fastest time. The Swede said the car was now ‘OK’ but the run just contained too many small driver mistakes. With a clean run he said he believes a Top 3 run is possible and going forward he is much more confident about the remaining two qualifiers.
Awesomatix’s Viljami Kutvonen said changes to his A700 EVO had improved the car over how it ran in Q1 but the second run was let down by two driver errors. Eventually posting the 5th fastest time, the Finn said he is undecided as to whether to make any further tweaks to his set-up ahead of Q3.
Germany’s Tim Benson completed the Top 6. Driving his LRP powered Xray with the same set-up as he ran yesterday when he posted the 7th fastest time, he said his focus for the run was to do 5-minutes with no mistakes. Achieving that the 23-year-old said having notched up a second safe run he will use the third qualifier to try a set-up to try and gain more in corner steering.
Running the same car as in Q1, Rheinard appears be at a loss as what to do to cure his understeer problems which are clearly visible as the former 3-time World Champion makes his entry onto the main straight. The German said his two flying exits from the track were a result of him trying, unsuccessfully, to drive through the understeer. For Q3 he is undecided as to whether to switch to his stiffer ETS chassis or make some radical set-up changes to his ‘softer’ TRF418.
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