3-way showdown to decide overall TQ in final qualifier
The final round of qualifying at the Touring Car World Championships in Florida will be a three way showdown between Yokomo’s Naoto Matsukura & Ronald Volker and surprise of the event Bruno Coelho. Bringing Day 3 of the Kissimmee event to a close, the penultimate round of qualifying saw Matsukura throw away an almost certain overall TQ as he put his BD7 into the wall at the end of the straight just before the halfway mark while on target to top the times for a third time. This allowed team-mate Volker to TQ the round ahead of Coelho’s Xray and a much improved Atsushi Hara. Overnight it is Matsukura who holds the provisional TQ thanks to a faster time for the first of his two TQ runs meaning that Volker needs to TQ the morning’s final qualifier while Coelho needs to do so with the fastest time of the six rounds.
After his Q5 topping run, a somewhat disappointed Volker said, ‘I should be more happy that I got the TQ but I didn’t manage to get the 5-minute time I needed’. Only half a second off the tie breaking fastest time that gives Matsukura the top spot in the overnight ranking, the European Champion said both Matsukura and Coelho each had a better pace than he did. Seeing his team-mate crash and Coelho have a mistake however he said while he pushed for a fast time he didn’t want to over do it and throw away a TQ run by making a mistake himself too. The German said with a Yokomo 1-2 with just one round to go he is happy for the team saying its one of their best recent World Championship performances.
Commenting on his heavy crash which broke his BD7, Matsukura said the mistake was completely his own doing and while the car was ‘so good’ the driver was ‘so shit’. Running yet another fastest lap for the round, only Volker joining him on a 16-second lap, he said the feeling of his car is really good and he know he is quicker than his team-mate adding he just needs to keep things clean for 5-minutes. Having tried to drive more safely, the Top Qualifier of the 1:12 Worlds held earlier in the weekend said the car starts to understeer, as it is set-up to be driven with his aggressive driving style. With the pressure more on Volker and Coelho for the final qualifier, Matsukura said tonight he was going to enjoy a good dinner and relax and all would be good for the morning.
Losing time after riding the curb just after the loop, Coelho said his Nosram powered T4 was ‘super good’. His first electric Touring Car World Championship, having previously raced the event in 1:10 & 1:8 Nitro and 1:8 Offroad, the 21-year-old said the event is exceeding the expectations he had before flying out from his home country of Portugal. Taking the impressiveness of his performance in his stride, he said the plan for tomorrow is to try to do do pretty much the same thing as he did today.
Running his first Top 3 time, Hara said ‘finally he had found a good feeling’ with his Yokomo. The former champion, taking the categories first world title in 2000 at the controls of a Yokomo, said ‘having watched this Bruno guy and see how he could drive his car we had a small meeting with Umino’. Figuring out a few things he would use his qualifier to test these and they worked really well with Volker expected to run them for Q6. Able to close the gap to the lead pace, Hara is ‘really confident for tomorrow’, when he hopes to be able to improve to 5th on the grid a position that is provisionally being held by Viktor Wilck.
For defending Champion Tamiya, the penultimate qualifier proved difficult. Having been third in every round before, Marc Rheinard would only post the 9th fastest time, one place in front of champion Jilles Groskamp. Wilck would be the fastest TRF419 taking fourth for the round with Akio Sobue sixth. Rheinard said ‘it was a round to forget’. Changing his shock oil he said the change was not very good but the biggest problem was the sun. Covered by a cloud for Heat 9 he said this gave those drivers an advantage both in terms of cooler track conditions and visability. Groskamp also said the conditions changed so much after 1-minute of the run with the sun making it warmer and harder to see. Going into the final qualifier Groskamp sits 8th on the grid behind Hara and infront of Xray’s Alexander Hagberg.
Fifth in Q5, Paul Lemieux is one of three drivers currently outside the Top 10 who still has a chance of making it into the A-Main with a good final qualifier. Sitting 11th, the Xray driver is the only hope of a home driver being in the World Championship deciding encounters. Two others still in with a chance of making it are current 200mm World Champion Meen Vejrak and Kyosho’s Christopher Krapp, who setting the 7th and 8th fastest times respectively in the day’s final qualifier, sit 12th and 13th overall.
View our event image gallery here.
