January 9, 2015

Ronnefalk TQ’s opening two qualifiers at DHI Cup

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David Ronnefalk got his 2015 season off to the best start possible as he topped the opening two rounds of 2WD Buggy qualifying at the DHI Cup in Denmark.  The newly signed HB driver, who is running a Team C chassis as his new chassis sponsor don’t yet have a 2WD car, headed a 1-2 for the TM2 with, currently out of chassis sponsor contract, Joern Neumann using the same car to finish second in both qualifiers.  Neumann’s former Durango team-mate Michal Orlowski who was quickly signed up by Schumacher also made a promising start to his new contract as he completed the Top 3 in each of the qualifiers.

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Improving his opening TQ pace by an impressive 5-seconds, Ronnefalk said most of that was down to his set of handout Schumacher tyres being better on their second run.  Having made no changes to his chassis set-up since hitting the track at the Odense Conference Centre for the first practice in the morning, the Swede said with the tyres very aggressive on the carpet and lacking traction on the wood in Q1 this led to two mistakes. With the tyres providing better grip on the wood in the second of the four scheduled qualifiers he said the overall feeling was much better and other than once having to roll the back double once due to a bad line on the approach, he said he was very happy with his performance.  Planning to continue with the same set of tyres for Q3, he said the plan for now is then to use the last qualifier to break in a second set of tyres for the finals.

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Stiffening up the diff in his buggy for the opening qualifier, reigning European Champion Neumann said this improved the car’s earlier lack of speed out of the corner a lot.  Getting a modified top deck from the Team C ‘guys’ for Q2 he said while it didn’t feel any different to drive this further increased the buggy’s overall speed.  Returning the part after the run he will now make the same modification to his own deck by cutting it down the centre for more flex.  Much happier with the car now he feels he still needs to get more used to the car but he is much more confident now going into Day 2 of the event.

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‘Too many mistakes’ was Orlowski’s reaction to his two qualifiers.  Very complimentary of his new Cougar KF chassis, which he has not changed since free practice, the highly rated 13-year-old said the short landing on the back straight of the track is causing him particular difficulty adding that the nature of the track meant the landings where crucial with the landing having to be inch perfect to go fast and it was easy to over jump and miss the critical point on the short down ramp of the jumps.

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While Team Associated driver Niclass Mansson would post the fourth fastest time in Q1, last year’s Top Qualifier Oskar Levin would take the spot in the second qualifier.  Having had a ‘run to first’ in the first qualifier with two early mistakes leaving him 16th, the Team C driver took a safer approach to Q2.  After a better start, the Swede said ‘the pace got better and better’ and for tomorrow he hopes to build on the performance.  For Xray’s Martin Bayer qualifying netted him a pair of fifth fastest times.

View the event image gallery here.

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