Greiner takes Q5, TQ to be decided in final qualifier

Dominic Greiner has TQ’d the penultimate qualifier at the 200mm World Championships in Thailand. The result puts the Serpent driver in contention to become the overall Top Qualifier with him set to go up against Alexander Hagberg in the final round, the Xray driver ending the fifth round second fastest.  With Mugen’s Takehiro Terauchi completing the Top 3, the top heat provided plenty of late drama.  On a TQ round, Q3 & 4 pace setter Teemu Leino ran out of fuel with 45-seconds still to run.  With Dario Balestri taking over at the top of the timing screen he too would once again have run time issues, his Caparicorn coming to a stop on the final lap.  This left Mark Green on target to top the round but he would crash out saying afterwards the last lap off was simply down to ‘an old man driving like shit’.

Having not been happy with his car, Greiner said changing the front end to a similar set-up of that of Green for the round has made the car ‘so much better’ and ‘now (he) could feel the car’.  The 22-year-old said overall the car is now very good not just for qualifying but also for the longer finals however if he could get ‘just a very little more steering’ it would be perfect.  With the car’s designer Michael Salven saying they are that close to the set-up that a 1mm caster change would be too much, he said that they would try to changing the position of the car’s moveable weights.

A second off Greiner’s TQ pace, Hagberg described Q5 as a ‘pretty good safe run’. He said while a good run it could haven been be a little faster but having traction rolled while on a TQ pace in the fourth round he said he was a little scared to push too hard.  The Swede said his NT1/Orcan package was ‘better than (him)’ and after his earlier off & DNF he was having problems with finding which part of the track offers the best racing line.  Complimenting the run time of his engine he said this was a good thing to know for the finals.

Claiming his first Top 10 run, 2010 World Championship runner-up Terauchi put his improvement down simply to better driving.  Pleased with how his Novarossi powered MTX-6 has been running he said this was his first ‘clean round’. Planning to run the car the same for the final qualifier, the 23-year-old said he would instead continue to work on his driving.

Posting the fourth fastest time was Nicholas Lee.  The Xray driver said having opted not to add weight to the front of his NT1, this time round the car developed a slight understeer.  Planning to make a change to the set-up to hopefully cure this for the final qualifier, the Singapore driver said he would first discuss possible changes with team-mate Hagberg.

Top Shepherd driver for the round, Simon Kurzbuch was pleased with 5th as he achieved his goal of qualifying in the Semi Finals, only the Top Qualifier directly making the Main.  Describing his Velox V10 as ‘easy to drive’, the 2-time 1:8 Worlds finalist will for the final qualifier just make an engine change, using the track time to get his ‘race’ Novarossi engine ready for Saturday’s action, the Swiss ace having a day off tomorrow for his achievement.

Completing the Top 6 was Yuya Sahashi, the Serpent driver declaring it a ‘safe run’. Behind the Japanese driver, Australia’s Jeff Hammon, who claimed P2 in the second round of qualifying, took his Mugen to the 7th fastest time ahead of Kyle Branson.  Branson who failed to finish all three qualifiers yesterday due to run time problems finally went 5-minutes after being told by his Capricorn boss Patrizio Rossi to change to Max engines after he started Day 2 of qualifying again with his XRD engine running out of fuel.  The British driver said he didn’t drive great as the Max engine had very different characteristics with the extra speed causing him to overshoot his lines.  Suffering one mistake as a result, the 20-year-old said now that he can make 5-minutes easy he was going to use the final qualifier to build back up his confidence.  Unfortunately for Capricorn team-mate Balestri, who has had run time issues every round, being an XRD salaried driver means he cannot make a such a switch.

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