Rheinard just misses 39-lap Q3 run

Marc Rheinard just missed out on becoming the only driver other than defending World Champion Naoto Matsukura to complete a 39-lap run at the 1:12 World Championships in the Netherlands when he took his Speed Passion powered prototype CRC to a 38/8:00.858 run in the third round of qualifying.  While Matsukura produced his third TQ run of the day with a new fastest time and outright fastest lap, all the attention is on the battle behind him which is building up between regular Touring Car rivals Rheinard, Jilles Groskamp, Ronald Volker and Alexander Hagberg.

Having run out of battery in Q2 and afterwards also finding that his car was tweaked, Rheinard reduced the boost on his speedo for the run and had no such problems in his third heat describing his car as being ‘much better’.  The Touring Car World Champion, who hasn’t raced 1:12 since the last World Championships in Germany 2-years ago, lost 1.5 second early in the run when himself & Jilles Groskamp, who set the third fastest run, made contact.  Feeling he reduced the boost too much he will increase it slightly for his next qualifier along with a slight set-up adjustment as he would like to have a little more steering.

Lying last after the opening two rounds of qualifying Ronald Volker finally managed to finish a heat which was good enough for the 4th. Running an Associated, Yokomo’s big hope for the Touring Car World Championships which take place later in the week, Volker said changes to his Associated chassis for Q3 to try and get more steering left him with a very edgy car.  The German lost a lot of time in the opening part of the run as he adapted to the handling and so plans to revert to the set-up he used early.

Despite loosing one of the side springs from his OCRA powered Xray during Q3, Hagberg set the fifth fastest time improving his previous best by 7/10th.  The Swede said his X12 is not the fastest but is very easy to drive allowing him to put in clean runs and this is a huge benefit as others drop time due to mistakes.  With two solid times to his credit, each drivers best two runs from six are added together to determine the grid for the finals,  Hagberg will try some small set-up changes for Q4 to see if he can improve the cars speed.

Behind Hagberg were 2008 World Championship finalists Hideo Kitazawa and Andy Moore.  Moore was on a very fast run with his CRC but on his last lap he got caught up with a moment that Xray’s Paul Lemieux was having which cost the British driver almost 4 seconds and dropped him to 7th fastest.

Round 3 Qualification – Top 10 times
1. Naoto Matsukura (JP) – Yokomo – 39/8:08.694
2. Marc Rheinard (DE) – CRC – 38/8:00.858
3. Jilles Groskamp (NL) – Onpoint – 38/8:01.554
4. Ronald Völker (DE) – Associated – 38/8:01.886
5. Alexander Hagberg (SE) – Xray – 38/8:02.229
6. Hideo Kitazawa (JP) – Corally – 38/8:05.028
7. Andy Moore (GB) – CRC – 38/8:06.710
8. Simo Ahoniemi (FI) – CRC – 38/8:07.696
9. Olly Jeffries (GB) – Associated – 38/8:09.906
10.Markus Mobers (DE) – Onpoint – 38/8:11.417

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