Coelho TQs opening qualifier
Bruno Coelho has TQ’d the opening round of qualifying at the 1:10 4WD Offroad World Championships in Japan. Having ended yesterday’s seeding practice second fastest, the Xray driver would go on top the first of the five qualifiers by a substantial margin of almost 5-seconds from Yokomo driver Tom Cockerill. The start of qualifying would be very much a European affair with Michal Orlowski and David Ronnefalk next up, 2nd to 4th covered by just 0.024 of a second. With top seed Yusuke Sugiura suffering ‘too many mistakes’, the Kyosho driver would end up tenth while reigning champion Steven Hartson would continue to struggling posting only the 24th fastest time. One of the pre-event favourites, Naoto Matsukura was in contention for the TQ until his Kyosho steering locked left as a result of an electrics issue. The powerhouse nation of offroad, the best American for Q1 would be Carson Wernimont in 5th.
‘No mistakes, the run was perfect’, was how Coelho summed up Q1. Racing in only his second ever major 1:10 Offroad event, the 22-year-old said, ‘I was just driving safely looking to get a Top 10 for the round’. Describing his XB4 as ‘really amazing’, the European Nitro Touring Car Champion said after at the start he did for a moment have concerns something was wrong. Running on used tyres, the Portuguese star said the rear of the car was loose and on each of the opening two laps he had to save the buggy from crashing. Thinking ‘whats happened’ he said from the 3rd lap on it was perfect allowing him to run clean to the end of the 5-minutes. Looking to Q2, he said he planned to leave the car as is and ‘try to repeat again’ his run. Xray team-mate Martin was laying down the early TQ pace but after a mistake the Czech driver struggled to regain his rhythm leading to more costly errors that left him 31st.
‘Pretty epic’ was Cockerill’s reaction to his surprise pace. The British driver said ‘I just cruised around with no mistakes’ admitting to losing a few 1/10th as nerves kicked in over the closing laps. Opting for used tyres to give him an easier car with which to go for a banker, the former Schumacher designer said his Yokomo team was still ‘lacking a touch of pace’ and aiming for another banker in Q2 he expects others to feature more strongly as they get more consistent over the 5-minutes.
European Champion Orlowski said he went for a safe run but still made mistakes and also having an issue with traffic felt combined they cost him around 4-seconds. Having found his car twitchy in seeding practice yesterday, the 14-year-old said after trying a shorter wheelbase in the morning’s practice run they went back and the car was now working really good. Happy with the result, saying a Top 3 was his goal, the Schumacher driver said his CAT K2 was good and he will just fit new rear tyres or Q2.
Describing his fourth as ‘decent’, HB’s David Ronnefalk added ‘I wont say it was super fast but it was clean at least’. With his Orion powered D413 ‘really good’, the Swede said he got ‘super nervous’ starting out but stayed that way throughout the 5-minute causing him to not once hit his lines but luckily he didn’t crash. Feeling the ‘pace is there’, he said ‘I just need to relax, hit my lines and I should go faster’. Team-mate Ty Tessmann would take his D814 to the 7th fastest ahead of TLR’s Ryan Maifield.
Saying ‘we’ve come a long way from yesterday to today’, Wernimont felt it was a ‘pretty good’ start to qualifying. Suffering one crash which required the new Yokomo signing’s YZ-4 to be marshalled, he said the rest of the run was ‘pretty safe’. Planning some small set-up tweaks for Q2, he said the main aim is just to keep his driving clean.
Behind Wernimont, former 2WD World Champion Hayato Matsuzaki was pleasantly surprised to complete the Top 6. The Yokomo driver said ‘it went better than I thought’ adding like Wernimont they have ‘improved a lot’ the YZ-4. Aiming to keep his car the same, he said having crashed twice in Q1 he would try to improve his driving. Yokomo lead driver Lee Martin would end the round 11th.
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