Coelho stuns with TQ in 4th round

Having already impressed by getting himself seeded in the top heat for qualifying, Bruno Coelho stunned the title favourites at the Touring Car World Championships by TQing the fourth round of qualifying. Having only driven on the Full Throttle RC Raceway track for the very first time on Day 1 of the event, the Portuguese diver has ended Yokomo’s domination of the event and put himself right in the mix with Naoto Matsukura and Ronald Volker for the overall TQ with two rounds of qualifying remaining. Running the first 18-lap round of the day, the Xray driver set the pace from Volker with the ever consistent Marc Rheinard third for a fourth time. Swapping the TQ pace with Coelho, Q1 & Q3 pace setter Matsukura would make an error leaving him 8th for the round.

Suffering a mistake at the start and then having traffic issues in Q3, Coelho said this time round he had no such issues. Describing his Nosram powered T4 as ‘awesome’, running it the same as he did in the previous round when he was 10th, he said the key to his impressive run was to drive it slower and ‘not (to) push too much’. Coming in for plenty of phrase from his competitors, most non-European drivers having never heard of the 21-year-old before, the very cool & collected drivers said the plan for the penultimate round was to ‘just try and do the same again’.

‘You could call it interesting’, that was Volker’s view of the round. The ETS Champion, who knows Coelho’s potential having been out TQ’d by him at this year’s European Championships, said he was disappointed with his own performance as second doesn’t improve his points to Matsukura. Suffering with an understeering BD7 at the start of the run and running only 4th, he said he knew he had to do something and changing his driving to the handling of the car he ‘gave (his) all’. Able to close the gap to 3/10ths to Coelho he said it was frustrating to get so close as ‘now its a 3-horse race for the overall TQ’.

‘Actually not so bad’ said Rheinard continuing ‘but where did this Bruno guy get his speed’. The 3-time Touring Car Champion, who won the first of those titles at this very track, complimented Coelho describing his drive as ‘impressive’. Changing the diff oil on his new TRF419, the German said this was a step forward and now for the next one they will make a shock oil change as they expect it to again be hot.

Tamiya team-mate Viktor Wilck had another 4th fastest time, the Swede just focusing on securing another good result. Now with a Top 10 position locked in, the Swede said he can use the remaining two qualifiers to ‘try out some new stuff’. Behind Wilck, team-mates Akio Sobue and defending Champion Jilles Groskamp completed the Top 6.

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