Drivers sit out Q3 following overnight rain

Overnight rain in Ettlingen, Germany, meant few drivers took to the track for the third round of qualifying for the 200m European Championships.  Although the rain stopped before the commencement of the penultimate round of heats and the track looked dry but conditions were extremely slippy.

After a disastrous day yesterday world class electric touring car racer Ronald Volker set the pace for Q3 with a 19 lap run compared with yesterday’s 31 lap TQ time set by Robert Pietsch showing just how slow the track was.  Suffering an engine bearing failure in Q1 and then setting the 7th fastest time in Q2 only to be excluded after his exhaust stinger was found to be marginally outside the permitted 200mm track width, Volker said some corners didn’t actually feel too bad but other parts of the track had just ‘zero traction’.  With the overhead clouds looking very threatening at the moment, the Team Shepherd driver is praying for a chance of a dry run in the final qualifier otherwise he said he is in for a busy afternoon as he looks set to qualifying third last of the 120 entries.

In the top heat the only driver to venture on track was Jilles Groskamp.  The 2008 World Championship Top Qualifier did just three laps in the warm-up to check a different Orion engine in his Shepherd Velox V10 but said afterwards the car looked like it had done a full final after it picked up all the loose tyre foam.

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