World Champ Coelho takes opening 4WD qualifier

World Champion Bruno Coelho has taken the opening round of 4WD Buggy qualifying at the DHI Cup. Making his debut at the event, the Portuguese ace headed an Xray 1-2 from Martin Bayer with HB’s David Ronnefalk completing the Top 3.  For reigning champion Joern Neumann he would open his quest for a fifth consecutive title with 4th.  Having battled it out for pole in 2WD, Michal Orlowski would get a P5 from the first of the four qualifiers with eventual 2WD Top Qualifier Tom Cockerill completing the Top 6.

Only 8th fastest in practice yesterday, Coelho said a switch to his EOS Round 2 winning set-up for qualifying was a big improvement.  With his XB4  flipping a lot in practice and having ‘not so much steering’, he said the set-up change had made it ‘easier to drive’, added ‘more steering’ and the buggy now ‘doesn’t flip’.  After some little mistakes early on in the heat, Coelho said he was able to push hard and make back the time.  Setting the fastest lap which was over a 1/10th up on that next best time which was set by Ronnefalk, he said with the car now very good he would leave it unchanged.  Looking across at his team-mate he joked, ‘I beat Bayer so I’m super happy’, the pair always keen to add a bit of humour to proceedings with friendly banter aimed at each other.

In response Bayer said ‘as I said yesterday expected Bruno to come’.  Fastest in practice, the former European Champion said the result was ‘how it should be with Bruno fastest so I am happy’.  The lead development driver for the XB4, he said ‘the car is comfortable on the track so its all good’.  Continuing, he said the ‘car is good its just on me to drive it’.

Describing his run as ‘OK’ , Ronnefalk added ‘after the disaster in 2WD it was nice to run 4WD again’.  The 20-year-old said with a lot more traction today his Orion powered D413 was ‘oversteering a lot’ and he had to make adjustments on the track.  In terms of the qualifier he said ‘I had a rough first few laps and didn’t hit my lines which led to a crash’.  With the change in track conditions for Q2 he will run a different cut on the front tyres as well as making some rear end set-up changes.

‘OK, I think 4th was the maximum I could achieve’, was how Neumann summed up his opening performance.  The factory Serpent driver continued the ‘speed is not there’.  Describing his SX4 as a little difficult the German said the problem is how the car is landing and this is losing time.  With Serpent’s 1:10 designer and Neumann’s long time engineer Gerd Strenge on hand to support his driver, Neumann said ‘we know what we need to change and we will have this for the next EOS race’, the third round taking place  in Germany later this month.  With one crash he said maybe 3rd is possible in Q2 but his body language was that his unbeaten reign as DHI Cup Champion was looking like a mammoth task to maintain.

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