No surprises as Volker tops RROC practice

Day 1 of the Reedy International Touring Car Race of Champions threw up no real surprises as defending champion Ronald Volker set the pace over four rounds of practice at the Tamiya Raceway in California. With the Yokomo driver unable to better his P3 time, it was Viktor Wilck who made the most of the final round of practice improving from 10th to 2nd.  The Serpent driver would also reduce the gap to Volker to less than 3/10ths of a second, the smallest margin at which the German headed the time sheets over the opening day.  Christopher Krapp made it an all European Top 3, finishing the day ahead of team-mates Akio Sobue and Marc Rheinard, the latter the only one of the three to better his time in P4. While the times may have little bearing on the race’s unique format with 12 rounds of heads up racing getting underway in the morning, the big talking point at the end of the opening day is the narrow racing line. A track popular with racers because of its many overtaking opportunities, a particularly dirty offline has left some drivers concerned that overtaking could be limited.

With drivers given the chance to do a grid start during their final practice, Volker said it was interesting to run behind other cars and try to overtake them.  Describing it as ‘totally different to last year’, he said going offline to attempt a move led to the tyres to pick up a lot of dirt leaving the car loose for the next couple of corners.  Despite topping the times, the body language of the ETS Champion didn’t reflect satisfaction of that fact. Running behind Keven Hebert, he said while he was a little faster than the Canadian but any attempts to pass just resulted in his tyres picking up debris leaving him with no traction.  Hoping that the track is cleaner and has higher grip tomorrow, he said it needs this as it will make for ‘better competition’ over the next three days. One noticeable thing over the day was the amount of track surface that broke away with track staff gathering a rather big pile of debris as they blew off the track at the end of the day’s action.

Changing to softer front springs on his S411, the front and rear spring now the same, Wilck said this made the car a little more easy out of the corners. Describing the car overall as ‘easy to drive and good for racing’, the Swede thinks starting on the outside of the grid is going to be interesting because if you have to stay outside through the first corner then you could have problems due to it being ‘very dirty’ offline. While the track was cleared of the dirt at the end of the day, he hopes that they will also sugar water a much wider line in particular the first corner so as to give the opportunity to overtake.

‘All the team’s cars were good today and I am really happy with my car’, that was Krapp’s summary of his first ever day at the Tamiya track.  Changing to a steering knuckle made of a different plastic to the standard one for P4, he said this improved the TRF419 in the short corners.  However with the ‘racing line very narrow’, he was unable to improve on his time after the practice start.  Describing the track as ‘really dirty offline’, the multiple World Championship finalist said this was making it ‘hard to overtake’ but in terms of his car he was ready to go racing.

Feeling his Tamiya was better in P4, Sobue said that wasn’t reflected in his time as he made ‘many mistakes’ over the 5-minutes.  Looking forward to getting down to racing, the 20-year-old star of the ETS’ smallest track of the season, Mattsee, said for him it was a good day and he would leave his car unchanged for the first race.

Changing to a harder shock spring on his TRF419, Rheinard said the car was not as good as before.  Dropping from 4th to 5th, even though he picked up his 3-lap pace a little, he plans to go back to a softer spring for the opening race adding that with this ‘the car should be good enough for racing’.

Completing the top 6, Team Yokomo’s Meen Vejrak ran two cars. With one car fitted with short shocks and the other with the regular shocks, the shorter version gave more overall traction and this is what he would use for the opening race. While he didn’t improve on his earlier pace the Thai ace said, ‘the Reedy is not about being the fastest’.

Dropping one place to 7th, HB’s JJ Wang said changes to his PRO-5 ‘didn’t really work out’.  Despite this, the first time visitor to Tamiya Raceway said it had been a good day and he had made a lot of progress.  The fastest HB driver, Freddy Sudhoff 12th and Andy Moore 15th fastest in the 27 car field, he said the team would brainstorm tonight to see where they need to go with set-ups for tomorrow. Behind Wang, Ryan Cavalieri improved his time fractionally in P4 to end the day 8th with Associated team-mate Keven Hebert and young Japanese talent Naoki Akiyama completing the Top 10.

View the event image gallery here.