Phend heads seeding at 4WD World Championship
Dakotah Phend heads seeding at the 4WD Offroad World Championship at the end of the opening day of action in Arizona. The TLR driver’s opening time remaining the quickest as 1:8 Buggy World Champion Davide Ongaro set the pace in the second seeding to move up to P2 with one more seeding round in the morning. Despite improving on his second fastest time set in the opening round, Broc Champlin dropped to P3 while Dustin Evans enjoyed a good run to jump up to fourth. Another to make a big improvement was Joern Neumann whose Sworkz means four different manufacturers in the current Top 5 seeding. For defending Champion Bruno Coelho it was a tough first day at Hobby Action with the Xray driver currently set to line up in the second fastest heat for qualifying and in need a good final practice in the morning.
Summing up the second seeding round with, ‘it wasn’t the best round’, Phend said, ‘I felt that might be the case going into the run. ‘Messing around with some stuff’ on his buggy after setting the fastest 3-consecutive laps in Round 1 of seeding, a time his rivals couldn’t better in the second round, he said he will try something in the morning’s final practice to ‘see where we need to be at for qualifying’.
Asked about his improved time, which was 3/10ths off Phend’s 56.303 time, Ongaro said, ‘It took three or four laps for the new tyres to break in but after that it was good and I am feeling confident with everything’. With the final seeding round and 4 of the 5 rounds of qualifying on tomorrow’s (Monday) timetable the Team Associated driver said, ‘I am looking forward to tomorrow. It should be good’.
Champlin found himself in bother at the start the second seeding round as he car came unbound while he was up on the driver start. Eventually getting it working again he said the new tyres were better but given the chaos at the start he left a lot out there. Looking to tomorrow, Champlin said he is ‘excited for qualifying’.
‘That was good but I don’t really know why’ was Evans reacting to setting the fourth fastest time. Running new tyres in the first seeding round, the Reedy team driver said it was ‘horrible’. Switching to another new set for his second attempt his Associated buggy was ‘dialled’. Pleased also at managing a clean 5-minute run, he said he is driving well within himself adding ‘it is not a track you can go all out at. You’ve got to be reserved. The double at the end of the straight is always a challenge’. He concluded, ‘I know I have got the pace for tomorrow’.
Knocking 1.5 seconds of his 3-lap time, summing up the second run Neumann said, ‘the first half was not so good but after that the car was really good’. Asked what he felt changed, the German said, ‘I didn’t warm-up the differentials that time so maybe I need to do that like before. I think the car is good and we have made big improvements since the Warm-up Race. Now we need to see how everything is going with tyres in qualifying but I think we are in a good position’.
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