Q1 in Xiamen goes to WC Bruno Coelho

The first round of qualifying for touring car is complete and it was top seed Bruno Coelho who emerged on top. With the World Champion in a league of his own, 4 seconds behind it was Akio Sobue followed by the Singaporean pairing of Nicholas Lee and Dominic Quek with Viktor Wilck completing the top 5. Commenting on his TQ run, each driver getting 3 rounds today, the Xray driver said ‘it was very good’. Changing back to the base setup they used in CP1 yesterday, and making some further changes including the use of a lightweight body, he said that his T4 2020 was much faster this morning and had more steering. Feeling the track was slightly faster, the sun not showing up so far, Bruno said he will discuss with his mechanic Francesco Martini to discuss what to change ahead of Q2.

Infinity driver Akio Sobue ended the run in 2nd declaring that the car is ‘now good, better than yesterday’. Using a prototype of the company’s new mid motor touring car, the Japanese driver felt that the conditions had changed and are now better today. Having tried some small changes for Q1, he will now make more set-up changes as he looks for more steering and better cornering speed.

3rd for Yokomo, Nicholas Lee had to jostle for track position at the start of the run having felt that the drivers were not spaced enough off the starting grid. Catching Dominic Quek and Gary Huang early on, this delayed him and later had to let Quek back passed on track which he felt disrupted his rhythm. On his car he commented that he was the only one of the front runners on really old tires, with some others using new and so he was pleased with his pace considering this. Looking for more steering he will make some changes to his BD9, and for Q2 he will bolt on a fresh set of Sweep handout tires.

Taking 4th in round 1 of qualifying Xray driver Dominic Quek felt that the traction was actually lower than yesterday and that his car only came good in the last 90 seconds. Saying he had to make way for Nico at the start, because of this he would take back track position near the end of the run from his fellow Singapore driver. Regarding his car he said that he had changed to a production ARS system, having used a pre production version previously, the better geometry making the car more stable. Feeling the car is ok, he will only make small changes for Q2.

In the Stock class it was Hong Kong driver Stick King who topped the opening qualifier, the Serpent driver heading a very closely matched top 3. In 2nd, just 0.7 behind was Dominic Quek for Xray with German driver Max Machler, driving his Awesomatix in 3rd a further 0.4 behind.

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