Volker capitalises to take Q3 at WC
Ronald Volker has TQ’ the third round of qualifying, the Yokomo driver capitalising on a number of mistakes from Q1 & 2 pace setter Bruno Ceolho. Running in the second fastest heat at the World Championships, Akio Sobue would set the benchmark for the top heat with an impressive time which Volker would just manage to better, his advantage over the 5-minutes only 0.095 of a second. For Coelho, who ran a slower time than Q2 while everyone else went faster, the round would give the Xray driver a P3 ahead of team-mate Alexander Hagberg. Having struggled in the opening two qualifiers just scraping Top 10 times, Q3 would be a big step forward for Marc Rheinard as he posted the fifth fastest time the gap to the TQ pace down from over 5 to 1.8-seconds.
While Volker declared ‘it’s a perfect result’ he conceded, ‘I definitely took benefit from the mistakes Bruno made’. Running Yokomo’s new BD8, he continued ‘but overall we are now closer (to Coelho)’. Making a shock change this made it ‘a bit better’ but it is ‘still not where we want to have the car’. Describing the current set-up as ‘a little too difficult to drive’ he said they will try to improve that for the second half of qualifying, 2 of the remaining 3 qualifiers still to be run today in Beijing. Shadowing Coelho over the run, setting the fastest lap of the round, Volker said while he could see he was faster than Coelho he knew he needed to keep pushing for a good time to beat Sobue and while close it ‘paid off’.
‘The car was super good but I one time spin on the first lap’, was how Sobue summed up his qualifier. Spinning in the chicane on the left side of the track, the Japanese ace said, ‘I touched the curb, my mistake’ adding ‘with no mistake I take TQ’. Having struggled with tyre drop off in the previous heat on his way to a P5 time, a shock change had given the car ‘better consistency’ over the qualifier. Happy with the shocks after the change and planning to leave them as is for Q4, the 1:12 World Championship podium finisher plans to make ‘a very small adjustment’ to another element of the car opting to not divulge what that would be.
Coelho gave a very simple explanation for not topping the times saying, ‘Three mistakes on three consecutive laps’. The reigning electric offroad World Champion said, ‘after the first mistake I tried to make back the time and made another mistake and then trying to make up for them both I made a third one’. Putting his mistakes aside he said, ‘the car is there, I was leading comfortably’. Hagberg described his P4 as ‘another solid run’. The 2014 Finalist added, ‘I lost too much time at the beginning again so we will make a set-up change to try improve the pace at the start’.
Running a different diff, Rheinard said while it was ‘a little better. It is still not great’. He continued, ‘for sure there is a lot of difference in the tyres’, adding ‘look at Viktor, right up there in the first two and now nowhere’. Getting a P20, Wilck himself felt his drop off was down to tyres saying the set was good yesterday in controlled practice but not good for the qualifier. Designated a used tyres round of qualifying, the 2004/8/10 World Champion said his TRF419X ‘starts good but then doesn’t feel to have a lot of bite’. Asked if he planned any car changes for Q4 he said, ‘to be honest I don’t know, I hope for new tyres’. Behind Rheinard, Yokomo’s Nicolas Lee again completed the Top 6 ahead of Capricorn’s Marc Fischer, Team Infinity’s Andy Moore, Yokomo young gun Naoki Akiyama and the Tamiya of Christopher Krapp.
View our event image gallery here.
