No change at the top in hot Q5
With an almost clear blue sky, conditions for the fifth & penultimate round of qualifying at the Nitro Touring Car World Championship were too hot to see any of the Top 15 drivers improve on their overnight times, the highest placed improvement coming from 2010 Worlds Runner up Takehiro Terauchi who bettered his previous best to move up from 33rd to 16th putting him in a Semi final qualifying position. In terms of times for the morning run it was Capricorn’s Jilles Groskamp who set the pace ahead of HB’s Atsushi Hara and KM Racing’s Dario Balestri.
Running 39 laps in a time of 10:05.229, which is over 3-seconds off his current best that puts him second overall behind HB’s Teemu Leino, Groskamp was very pleased with the time he achieved in the hot conditions. Having lacked a little pace compared to his rivals when running on a warmer track, the Dutch driver said he has now reached a good set-up for such conditions and this depending on the timing of the running of the 60-minute Main on Saturday could prove vital.
Hara, said while conditions were a lot warmer than he was expecting for the morning run he said the track actually had better grip then he expected but it was still too low to allow a ‘rocket round’ run. With Groskamp cautious over Q6 being a Rocket Round saying conditions could still be too hot, Hara now too has doubts that the final qualifier which should run at around 16:30 local time will be the ideal conditions for a TQ run. HB team-mate and provisional TQ holder Leino once again didn’t have the perfect set-up on his LRP engine and used the track time to tune it.
While running a faster time in Q5 was a tall order a number of drivers came undone as they tried to improve. Mark Green, who is the best placed Serpent driver and currently holds the final qualifying spot for the Semi Finals with the 18th fastest time, rolled his Novarossi powered 747 six laps into the run which cost him 9 seconds in time. Marc Rheinard, team-mate of Groskamp, clipped a kerb at the end of the straight and with the front of the car in the air he could get turned in for the corner resulting in his Capricorn hitting the wall for an instant retirement.
For three of the four Xray drivers currently inside the Top 18, Q5 proved fruitless with Alexander Hagberg, Dirk Wischnewski and Biagio Spataro all failing to finish the 10-minute qualifier. Sitting 8th fastest overall and the highest placed Xray, Hagberg ran out of fuel on his in-lap for his fuel stop. Former European Champion and Texas finalist Wischnewski had a clutch problem which caused his Orcan engine to over rev leading to a broken plug. Spataro used the run to test a finals set-up, as they expect conditions for Saturday to be similar, but the Italian eventually pulled up as the NT1 was too difficult to drive.
Top 18 after Round 5 of Qualifying
1. Teemu Leino – HB/LRP – 39/10:01.512 (3)
2. Jilles Groskamp – Capricorn/Maxima – 39/10.02.182 (2)
3. Meen Vejrak – KM Racing/Novarossi – 39/10:04.019 (4)
4. Atsushi Hara – HB/OS Speed – 39/10:04.710 (4)
5. Andy Moore – HB/Maxima – 39/10:06.779 (2)
6. Dario Balestri – KM Racing/Novarossi – 39/10:07.158 (3)
7. Keisuke Fukuda – Mugen/Picco – 39/10:07.537 (2)
8. Alexander Hagberg – Xray/Orcan – 39/10:08.265 (4)
9. Surikarn C – Xray/Max – 39/10:09.556 (4)
10.Biagio Spataro – Xray/G-Mar – 39/10:10.845 (2)
11.JJ Wang – Mugen/Novarossi – 39/10:11.166 (4)
12.Takaaki Shimo – Kyosho/OS Speed – 39/10:11.229 (2)
13.Mongkolplan Lomrose – Mugen/Maxima – 39/10:612 (2)
14.Robert Pietsch – Mugen/Novarossi – 39/10:12.177 (2)
15.Dirk Wischnewski – Xray/Orcan – 39/10:12.649 (3)
16.Takehiro Terauchi – Mugen/Novarossi – 39/10:13.092 (5)
17.Marc Rheinard – Capricorn/Capricorn – 39/10:13.099 (4)
18.Mark Green – Serpent/Novarossi – 39/10:13.104 (3)
View the complete event results here.
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