Coelho fastest after Day 1 in South Africa
Bruno Coelho is the fastest man in South Africa at the end of the opening day of the 10th running of the IFMAR Electric Touring Car World Championships. The Xray driver was fastest with his time from the penultimate round of the day’s eight rounds of free practice moving ahead of reigning champion Ronald Volker. Volker who was fastest for the first part of the day with his Round 4 time standing his best of the day would top the final practice but overall was 3/10ths off Coelho, a margin that is smaller that it sounds given the fastest 3-consecutive laps is 1:10.736. Christopher Krapp backed up Yokomo’s form at the Welkom RC Arena by posting the 3rd fastest time of the day posting his best laps in Round 7. While drivers reported the otherwise pretty consistent track to be slightly slower for the final practice, Freddy Sudhoff managed to improve on his time ending the day 4th ahead of Swedes Viktor Wilck and Alexander Hagberg.
Summing the first day of four at the Worlds, Coelho said, ‘It was OK. Our 5-minutes is very good. We tested this in the second last round but we are still trying new stuff on the car. It’s practice and we have plenty of it to try things so no point making excuses later that we didn’t find the right set-up. For the last practice we tried two different things on two different cars but both were not so good. Tomorrow we will go back and take a different direction in the final two free practices but we also plan to test in the controlled practices too’. Winner of the Warm-up Race, he said with conditions different to that race held in April, they are ‘trying to find a better set-up for the conditions now’. Asked about traction levels today the ETS Champion said, ‘I think they will stay like this so that is why we need to improve the set-up’. Pointing out ‘rear traction’ as the main area they need to improve he said, ‘when you hit the throttle the first few metres are the problem so we need to make it easier to drive’.
Having been running two aluminium chassis versions of the BD8 which feature a number of new parts, Volker said, ‘I decided on a car and while I was not always running on new tyres I feel pretty confident its good for all conditions, new or used tyres’. With Yokomo’s new touring car designer Matsuzaki Hayato as his mechanic here in Welkom, the German added, ‘we keep changing small things on the car but overall its going well but there are still a few small things combined we need to try to find the set-up I want. Bruno doesn’t have the gap like at ETS so it is looks promising’.
Krapp was pleased with his first day of action saying, ‘we improved every round except the last one but the track was slower’. Having tried both aluminium and carbon chassis cars in the early practices he opted to run carbon because ‘it felt more comfortable’. Describing himself as pretty close to the lead pace, the German added, ‘the plan is not to change much on the car now. I think I can gain a lot of time on the right side of the track. In the fast chicane you can gain a lot but there is also the risk you lose it all. I already improve there and I am happy with my first day but the right side of the track is an area I can still be better and I will work on that tomorrow’.
‘The car is excellent’ was Sudhoff response when asked to sum up Day 1. The Awesomatix driver continued, ‘we have been making small differences in the set-up and it feels more confident every round. If we could get a small amount of mid corner steering then it would be perfect’. The German added, ‘Over 5-minutes it is super consistent’. On track conditions he said, ‘the last one was slower, everyone was slower but I think that was because the hall was colder, before that it was pretty consistent’. The final practice ended just before 19:00 local time when there is a sharp drop in temperatures with it getting particularly cold at night.
Summing up the first day, Beijing podium finisher Wilck said, ‘It is hard to improve. We tested many things but didn’t improve and that’s a little frustrating’. The Serpent driver said, ‘we need a little more steering. We tried many things but then it starting getting loose and we didn’t have enough forward traction. We have two more (free practices) to go so we will go back to our set-up from earlier and then go in a different direction. Today we only made shock and spring changes’.
‘Average’ was how Hagberg described his day’s performance. The Xray driver added, ‘we are still trying to fine tune the set-up and the track is changing a bit so it’s hard to keep up but hopefully tomorrow we will figure it out.’ Asked what was the key element he was chasing in the set-up he responded ‘more steering’ continuing ‘the base set-up was better towards the end of the day but we are still missing 1/10th to fight for the top position’. Behind the newly crowned 1:12 World Champion Awesomatix’s Loic Jasmin ended the day 7th fastest ahead of Xray’s Dominic Quek, Yokomo’s Meen Vejrak and Jan Ratheisky, the Xray driver setting the pace in the Formula World Cup class that is running along side the Touring Cars here in South Africa.
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