Matsukura & Balestri top seeding rounds 2 & 3
With three rounds of seeding complete at the 1:8 Onroad World Championship, three different drivers have topped the times with Infinity’s Dario Balestri the latest driver to top the times in Japan. Toni Gruber kicked off the first day that counts for anything when he took the opening timed practice but an hour & a half later Naoto Matsukura took the round with an even faster 3-consecutive laps. With ranking points from the drivers best two of four rounds determining the heat groups for qualifying tomorrow, Balestri threw his hat in the ring for the Top Seed honours when he went fastest in the third round, track conditions slowing due to the hotter midday temperatures. The latest round would also see reigning World Champion Shoki Takahata have his run so far as he posted a P3 run behind Mugen Seiki team-mate Simon Kurzbuch who was very lucky to survive a driver error during the 7-minute practice.
Having felt his engine being too rich had cost him a better time in the first run of the day, Matsukura put that right in the second round using the same engine to run a time of 40.912 bettering Gruber’s time by 0.007 of a second! A multiple World Champion of the sport, the Infinity driver would swap out that engine after the run saying, ‘we will keep this one for qualifying’. With a different engine in his IF18 III he would end up only 8th fastest in third round saying, ‘the bottom end was not good’. With another engine for the final seeding round, he said the car is ‘very good’ and its just about getting engines sorted for qualifying, drivers getting 6 rounds over 2-days.
‘I’m following the conditions, they change a lot’, was Balestri’s reaction to his third round fastest run. Explaining that with the temperature rising the track naturally loses grip, the Italian continued, ‘the set-up has changed almost completely. Before we need steering and now we need traction. It is really, really, changing a lot’. The lower grip is reflected in his 41.108 time for the round.
Third fastest for the opening round but only 7th in the next one, Kurzbuch said the run was not so good due to a bad engine setting. With the engine ‘really good’ for Round 3 and the car also really good he said ‘more was possible’ if it wasn’t for his ‘driver error’. Crashing at the end of the straight with his car ending upside down in the racing line and somehow everyone avoid him, the Swiss driver explained, ‘I went to far on the inside and then the car took off. I was very lucky no one hit me on the track’. Despite his scare, Race Director Scotty Ernst warning drivers over the PA and complimenting Dominic Greiner for good marshalling and recovering the car, the former World Champion is confident for Day 1 of qualifying say, ‘everything is set for tomorrow’.
Pleased with his first two runs, Gruber explained that for his latest practice he ‘tried something for qualifying and it was not so good’. Also trying a different engine it was not as good as the previous one. Asked in what way it was not as good, the German said, ‘It was just a little down on pace, not as strong as the other one, and when everyone is this close on pace it’s the little things that are important.’ In a common theme among most of the top drivers, he will try yet another engine in the fourth & final timed practice.
Making a good first attempt at trying to talk to us in English for the first time without having one of the O.S engines representatives translate for him, Takahata said he is still working on engines and optimising the power available to him. Happy with his Mugen’s chassis set up, the Japanese driver has been improve this each round highlighted by his improvement in results of the day.
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