Ronnefalk tops first seeding round in Sweden
David Ronnefalk has topped the first of the two rounds of seeding practice at the 1:8 Offroad European Championships in Sweden. The HB Racing driver would become the first driver to run a sub 2-minute time for their fastest 3-consecutive laps around the Gröndal Ring track with yesterday’s Free Practice pace setter Elliott Boots his closest challenger. Improving on his sudden finding of speed in yesterday’s final practice, Juan Carlos Canas would complete the Top 3. With some of yesterday’s pace setters struggling this morning, Darren Bloomfield 12th and Yannick Aigoin 9th fastest, P4 would come from João Figueiredo followed by fellow Portuguese driver Carlos Durães with Italian youngsters Riccardo Berton and David Ongaro 6th and 7th respectively.
Summing up CP1, Ronnefalk said, ‘We knew yesterday the car is good and like I said before it was just a matter of finding the right tyres’. With JConcepts’ Jason Ruona on hand for support in Eskilstuna, the Swede would run a Metrix tyre which he found very much to his liking saying, ‘(it) worked really good. It gave good drive and is easy on the side’. Describing the track as ‘getting more bumpy’ the World Champion continued, ‘we are going to have to change the set up from now on but we’ll have a talk first and decide what to do for the next one. I don’t think we’ll change too much for the second practice or we might leave it the same to see how the car is when it is even rougher’.
Running a very similar 3-times lap to that with which he topped the four rounds of free practice yesterday, Boots said, ‘we are playing around with tyres because we haven’t made our final decision yet, the grip is more up now’. The Kyosho driver continued, ‘I think David has a little advantage with grip but perhaps I’m a bit more consistent. I didn’t see his car out on the track but I think while it’s quicker it’s on the edge. My car is edgy but its not undriveable’. For the final practice run, both of the controlled rounds 9-minutes long, the back to back reigning champion plans to ‘make a couple of changes to get it right for qualifying’.
Canas said running a brand new set of tyres left him with a difficult to drive car at the beginning but once the tyres came in ‘it was perfect after that’. Sticking with Procircuit’s Addictive tyre in P2 compound as he did yesterday, the Mugen driver plans to use the final practice to try the Spanish company’s H-Block tyre. With Yannick Aigoin running competitive times on the tyre yesterday, the 15-year-old wants to see how the tyre works for him. Leaving his car unchanged from yesterday, when he 4th fastest, the Spaniard will again run the car with the same set-up with just a shock rebuild planned. In terms of the track conditions, the 2016 Euro B Champion said, ‘there are some new holes but overall its similar to yesterday’.
‘Pretty good’ was how Figueiredo described his CP1 performance. The Kyosho driver said having had a car that was ‘too edgy’ yesterday, he went back to his Warm-up Race set-up and his MP9 which is running on Hotrace’s Amazzonia tyre ‘feels super good now’. One change however he will make for CP2 is the shock set-up saying, ‘I was a little soft in the shock oils’. Asked about how the track surface is holding up, he replied, ‘Compared to Warm-up (Race) it pretty good now so I think it should be ok’. Just making the Top 20 in free practice, Serpent’s Durães would make a huge improvement for Day 2 to set the 5th fastest time from the third fastest group.
Also in the same heat, Berton was pleased with his 3-laps. The teenager said his Kyosho was ‘quite easy to drive and the pace is not so bad’. 9th fastest yesterday, he said switching to a higher shock tower made his MP9 better on the bumps and also gave it less steering, the former Euro B Champion saying, ‘the track has a lot of grip’. Having run Pro-Line’s Fugitive tyre he will continue on that pattern but choose a harder X2 compound for the final practice.
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