Rheinard doubles up in Q5
Marc Rheinard has become the first driver to double up in qualifying at the 1:12 World Championships in Beijing. Having ended Day 1 of qualifying by becoming the fourth different driver to top the times when he took Q4, the Yokomo driver picked up were he left off to open the final day of the championship with a TQ run in the penultimate qualifier. Posting a new fastest time, he would be 3-seconds clear of Akio Sobue, the CRC driver now the only one who can deny the reigning champion the overall TQ. After a bad start to Q5, Naoto Matsukura would recover to complete the Top 3 but the result means that the Top Qualifier of the last four World Championships will for the first time in his career not start the A-Main from pole position.
Commenting on his Q5 performance, Rheinard said, ‘I struggled a little at the beginning, maybe I was nervous because Akio was catching me’. With the Japanese driver making a mistake he continued, ‘this gave me breathing room and then it was an easy run as I also knew Naoto was not in contention as he had a big mistake early on’. Describing his car as working ‘pretty good’ to the end of the 8-minutes the German said he ‘drove smooth’ due to his car dumping in Q2 yesterday but on checking it afterwards said ‘all was good so I can push a lot harder’.
With drivers starting the day with a free practice run, Sobue said after finding the traction was too high for his car set-up , his CRC suffering understeer, for Q5 he applied more additive to his front tyres. He said while this gave him a good car for the first two minutes he described the car for the final 2-minutes as ‘difficult’. This lead to ‘2 mistakes’ and ‘many small touches’ with the piping. Expecting traction to go down a little for the final qualifier, he plans to go back to yesterday’s tyre prep of using less additive on the front tyres.
Opting to run a bigger rear tyre for Q5, Matsukura would traction roll his Roche at the start of the qualifier. The 3-time Champion said, ‘I think there is more traction in the track today so this and bigger tyres caused traction roll’. Planning to go back to the same diameter rear tyre he ran all day yesterday, the reigning Touring Car World Champion feels he is driving better today. Having led each qualifier only to crash in 3 of the 4 rounds while on TQ pace he said, ‘today me also good’. He added ‘now I can’t make TQ but I will win last one for best start position’.
Posting a P4 to lock himself into the A-Main, Keven Hebert described it as a ‘conservative run’. The Team Associated driver said his Reedy powered RC12R5.2 ‘pushed too much (for him) to keep up with the leaders’ forcing him to ‘drive safe’. The Canadian will try to get more steering for the final qualifier concluding, ‘now that I have three good run I can us the next one to test some stuff for the final’. Behind Hebert Japanese drivers Toto Ebukuro and Kousuke Suzuki completed the Top 6 ahead of JJ Wang and former Touring Car World Champion Jilles Groskamp.
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