March 4, 2023

Volker takes Q1 from Dankel at MIBO International

Ronald Volker has taken the opening round of qualifying at the MIBO International Race, the German topping the times from fellow Mugen driver Eric Dankel.  Behind, No.2 seed Antoine Brunet would set the third fastest time from Xray team-mate Oliver Havranek, the latter having been at the top the timing screen for the early part of the heat.  Third fastest in seeding Christopher Krapp suffered with his driving in Q1, report his Yokomo as working fine he made three mistakes that left him only 15th fastest.  Summarising his run, Volker said, ‘it started off slow, I’m not sure why, but then I had a nice clean run’.  Topping the first of the five qualification rounds by 1.1 seconds from Dankel, the former World Champion plans to try a different tyre prep for his second attempt in the hope of getting his car to to speed quicker than in Q1.  He said, ‘Unlike other races the additive and cleaner here is open so I will slightly change my tyre prep plus I will also switch to a harder diff.’

‘A solid run’ was how Dankel summed up Q1 adding, ‘I had almost no mistakes,  I just overshot twice’.   Pleased that the ‘gap to Ronald is not too much’, he will run his car unchanged for Q2.  ‘I can run super consistent laps and the car is the same from the start to the finish so I just need to drive it’.

Setting the fastest lap of Q1, Brunet said he ‘lost a lot of traction in the last minute’.  The French driver said as a result of the lack of grip he pushed harder leading to make a mistake that cost him close to 1-second.  For Q2, he will change his tyre prep in the hope of preventing the drop over in traction towards the end of the run.

Havranek was pleased with his efforts but was at loss to explain a spin that cost him the TQ.  ‘It start quite good, I started fast even though I had an overshoot on the first lap.  I was leading but then I had a mistake, I did hit a dot but must have been a bump and it caused me to spin’.  The 18-year-old continued, ‘4th place is OK but the car is perfect so I will just check over it and try again’.  Behind the Slovak driver IRIS Racing’s Dionys Stadler completed the Top 5.

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