Volker fastest from Harper in DHI Cup practice
Ronald Volker was fastest in practice for this year’s DHI Cup, the Yokomo driver leading the way from the Schumacher of Elliott Harper. With the 18th running of the Danish Classic void of reigning champion Viljami Kutvonen, it was previous 7-time Champion Volker who came out of controlled practice quickest. Topping free practice, Volker wouldn’t be second quickest in the CP1 as returning Yokomo team-mate Yannic Prumper topped the times. While Prumper would repeat his time in CP2, Volker would find half a second to go to the top with Harper finding a similar improvement leaving Prumper to drop to P5 behind Marc Rheinard and former champion Viktor Wilck.
‘All good so far’ was Volker’s reaction to topping seeding. Working on his own car this weekend, engineer Yukijiro Umino not making the trip to Denmark, he continued, ‘I tried a different shock set-up in CP2 and found more corner speed’. While declaring himself ‘happy with P1’, the World Champion added, ‘but as always here it is not easy due to the carpet, the tyres and the high dots’. Looking to the first of the 4 rounds of scheduled qualifying that will conclude Day 1 of the event, he said, ‘Over 3-laps it is pretty close so I will just try to keep it clean for the 5-minutes’.
Commenting on his practice, Harper said, ‘I just tried going one way with the set-up and then the other way to see what works best. I had a little understeer in the last one but its hard to find the right balance between too much and not enough steering’. The British driver continued, ‘Overall everything is good so now lets see what we can do in qualifying’.
Setting the third fastest time, Rheinard summed up his performance as ‘average’ adding ‘the tyres are too different’. The Infinity driver said the tyres he had for CP1 where better than the set he ran in CP2. Calling the difference in the feeling of the tyres set as ‘weird’, he said ‘otherwise the car feels ok’ given the carpet and tyre are different to the ETS making the car ‘completely different to drive’.
Happy with his opening controlled practice, Prumper was somewhat at a loss to explain why ‘everyone else went quicker’ in CP2. The German said, ‘I just changed tyres but everyone went faster while we stayed at the same speed. I don’t know what to do’. One change he will make for the opening qualifier is to move the position of the rear diff in his Yokomo. Team-mate Christopher Krapp would take his example to the 6th fastest time, the German ‘still trying to get a balance’ that works with the differences between his two sets of handout tyres but he is better over 5-minutes than the 3-laps used in seeding.
With it 10-years since his breakthrough DHI Cup victory, then as a Tamiya driver, Serpent’s Wilck would post the fourth fastest time saying, ‘in the last one it was a little better’. The 2008 Champion continued, ‘I changed the set-up and it was faster but it was very difficult to drive due to a combination of the tyres, the carpet and set-up. I need to make it more stable over 5-minutes.’
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