Volker starts Day 2 with another important win ahead of Rheinard

Ronald Volker has started off the second day of racing at the Reedy Race of Champions with an important win, the Yokomo driver clocking up win No.3 ahead of arch rival Marc Rheinard.  Lining up on the front row for the Round 5 encounter with Rheinard and Akio Sobue also on the grid, Volker took two laps to find a way passed pole sitter Andy Moore before pulling clear of the field.  Looking on target to cruise to the win as Rheinard worked his way through from his P5 starting position, Volker then had a spin in the kink but such was his lead all still seemed to be under control for the World Champion, but it wasn’t.  A few laps later he would have an even bigger moment which was Rheinard’s opportunity but as the Infinity driver went for the pass he rolled allowing Volker to resume his lead as Rheinard found himself under attack from team-mate Sobue but the order remainder unchanged to the finish.  Ending the first day of racing 3rd in the standings, Christopher Krapp would come through from the back row to finish second in the opening race of the day as 2015 podium finisher Meen Vejrak posted his first win of the 2018 event.  In a somewhat crazy Race 3 in which the kink lived up to its infamous reputation, David Jun showed the youth how it is done to take the win, despite being in a last lap pile-up, ahead of Ryan Cavalieri and points contender Viktor Wilck.

‘I must admit, sometimes you need luck on your side and I had it this time to be able to stay ahead of Marc and Akio’, was how Volker summed up his latest win.  The 3-time former Champion continued, ‘I put a lot of pressure on Andy at the beginning because I want to get as much of a gap as possible on Marc.  Once I got by him I tried to pull away but after 2-minutes I had two spins in the kink.  The second one Marc was on my ass but then he made a mistake.’  Changing to a softer diff given the cooler morning conditions, he said the car became ‘very hard to drive in the rear end’ adding ‘I was struggling big time.  It got sunny 20-minute before the race and the diff felt like water’.

‘Just stupid’, was Rheinard’s reaction to his lost opportunity.  The defending champion said, ‘He gave me the chance to pass him and then I rolled it in the same corner.  I don’t know’.  The German continued, ‘that time the car felt loose to one side so I was fighting it. I’m not sure if it was the car or the tyres’.  He concluded, ‘let’s hope for better in Round 6, it’s almost half time’.

Three points off Volker in the points table, 2016 Runner-up Krapp said, ‘given my grid position I’m happy with the result’.  With the second allowing him to drop a third, the Yokomo driver continued, ‘just before the start the guy putting down my car noticed the knuckle was loose and tightened it but the my camber was off but I was lucky they found it.’  On his race he said, ‘I got through the traffic and thought I could catch Meen but saw he had a good save so I decided it was better to settle for 2nd than risk anything.  I have two 8th place and a 4th place starts for the rest of the day so I just going to try and keep getting Top 3 finishes’.

Recovering from an early penalty in his race to finish 3rd which moves him on to the same points as 3rd placed Krapp, Wilck said, ‘At the beginning Nicholas (Lee) went wide so I had to try a pass but in the end it was a bit too hard and I had to wait so I was last again’.  The Serpent driver continued, ‘everyone started to crash so I was able to come back to third’.  Asking the referee for clarification on penalties after the race feeling Lee had closed the door on him after running wide, the Swede said, ‘in the moment I didn’t feel the call was right because he closed the door but afterwards I think it was probably right’.  Starting his next race on pole, he said, ‘I’m first for the next one so I will try to have a clean run’.

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