Volker shows advantage in RROC practice
Ronald Volker showed himself to have the advantage in terms of speed going into this year’s Reedy Race of Champions. While being quickest at the iconic heads up racing event doesn’t count for much when it comes to getting the overall success, being fastest over the four rounds of practice today at Tamiya Raceway does provide Volker with a phycological boost over his 23 rivals. The 19th running of the Reedy Race, Volker would be the only driver to record a legitimate 11-second lap with reigning champion Marc Rheinard closest to the Yokomo ace some 2/10ths of a second off his long standing rival. Rheinard’s Tamiya team-mate Christopher Krapp, one of the stars of last year’s event before a costly mistake at the famous kink in Race 10 cost him a shot at the title, would make it an all German Top 3.
Happy with his day’s work, Volker said, ‘coming here we made a lot of set-up changes following the ETS and so far in practice they are very good’. The 2014 Champion continued, ‘the Reedy Race is not about speed but luck and making the right decision at the right moment but of course the advantage of being fastest in practice is you feel confident going into the first days racing’.
Rheinard was clearly feeling unimpressed by his practice pace saying he was ‘too slow’. The Reedy Race’s most successful driver with 5 titles to his credit, the 4-time World Champion described his TRF419 as ‘not aggressive enough’. Adding it felt ‘lazy’, he said, ‘Ronald’s car just bites and somehow we need to get our car like that for tomorrow’. Not completely defeated by Volker’s advantage he said, ‘in the end its the Reedy Race so a lot can happen but right now the pace is not there to go from 8th to the front’. With 24 entries for the invitational class, each round of racing will consist of 3 heats of 8 drivers.
While America’s most successful Reedy Race Champion Barry Baker makes a return to the invitational class this year, his last of four wins being in 2003, there is high expectations of the Reedy Race Trophy possibly staying on American soil this year. Putting in an impressive showing last year before going on to become the US National Touring Car Champion at the very same track, multiple Offroad World Champion Ryan Cavalieri is being widely tipped as one to watch. A multiple Offroad Reedy Race champion, the Californian driver is famed for his ‘Pudge luck’ and was happy with how practice went gone today. Not pleased at being ‘taken out in the final practice’, the Team Associated driver said it was a ‘pretty good’ day with them able to ‘make good improvements’ to the his TC7 over the day.
