Coelho leads way in Offroad at MIBO International

Bruno Coelho leads the way at the MIBO International Race, the Xray driver the top seed for both 2WD & 4WD Buggy in Hrotovice.   The World Champion’s first race on indoor carpet in more than 3-years, he has quickly found his rhythm on the 30 metre wide and 19 metre deep track topping 2WD from Martin Bayer and 4WD from young Polish talent Bartosz Zalewski.  Commenting on his morning’s work he said, ‘We have been making a lot of changes, testing & testing to make it faster and faster. Everything works good both in 2WD and 4WD’.  Asked if they had made any significant key changes he explained all the changes have been big to see if this is the right direction to go and if it is then the rest of the rest test it adding ‘this is a god race for this (approach)’.

Second fastest in 4WD and P4 in 2WD, Zalewski said his XB4 is ‘really smooth to drive and fast’.  The 16-year-old from Warsaw said he is pleased with the car set-up and has been more focused on his driving.  Describing his 2WD, in which his was 4th fastest, as a little unstable he said this feeling is probably more about how he is driving it then a set-up issue and so he will ‘work more on the driving’ for the opening qualifier.

Third fastest in 2WD, Max Gotzl summed up practice with ‘so far it’s good’.  The Czech driver continued, ‘both cars are good and most of my work has been on my hands (driving)’.  For 2WD he said the focus has been on a consistent 5-minutes while 4WD started off not so well a change to the car has since put in ‘back in the game’ with him seeding 4th behind his Xray/Elceram team-mate Martin Bayer.  Using the new Nitride speedo from Czech company Elceram, he said they have been doing some work on this also and he believes they have a good base set-up now for qualifying.  Overall Gotzl believes tyre management is going to be the biggest factor  to the outcome of qualifying.

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