Rheinard TQ’s second round in Florida
Awesomatix’s Marc Rheinard has TQ’d the second round of qualifying at the 1:12 World Championship at Beachline Raceway, the defending Champion benefitting from mistakes by Q1 winner Michal Orlowski and the rapid Kemp Anderson. While Anderson would recover to get a second for the round, albeit a lap down on his team-mate, Orlowski ended up with a 5th, a score he’ll be hoping to drop over the remaining 4 qualifiers. Running in the second fastest heat, Donny Lia made it a 1,2,3 for Awesomatix finishing ahead of Alexander Hagberg. The third place qualifier at the 2014 Worlds, which also took place in Florida, 1:12 specialist Lia had been chasing leader Hagberg in the same heat until the Xray driver crashed in the final half minute of the qualifier. The ‘stupid mistake’ cost the former World Champ a potential P3 and instead he matched his opening result of a fourth.
‘A TQ is a TQ but I’m not happy with my driving’, was Rheinard’s reaction to his TQ run. The German continued, ‘It was a horrible start and I hit the curbs everywhere which caused me to chuck a tyre. When the others crashed I tried to keep it on the track but I knew Donny (Lia) had a good time from his heat. In the end the result was good but I wasn’t fast and my driving was not good.’
Despite traffic costing him a potential TQ run, Kemp was ‘happy with P2’. The American said, ‘The car was good. We made a few small changes and it was good through the whole run but I got blocked by lapped traffic and bounced off the wall’. Looking to the third & final of today’s qualifiers, and knowing the speed is there he plans to ‘throw (the car) back down how it is and see how it goes because ‘I am pretty happy with it and just need a clean run’.
‘Definitely getting closer’ was Lia’s reaction to his second qualifying attempt. The owner of the 360v2 track in New York, Lia said having struggled yesterday it was great to be able to rebound and he feels now with a clean run he could do something. Asked why he was so far off the pace, he said the carpet and the grip threw him. He continued, ‘I only race this class. The other guys race many classes so it takes me longer to adapt to changes. I’m used to super high grip and a different version of carpet. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks and I am older too’.
Clearly frustrated with himself for his mistake, Hagberg said, ‘I crashed with no reason to. I had a good lead so there was no reason to make such a stupid mistake’. The former World Champion continued, ‘the car was again better than before’ and says the plan for the last of today’s qualifiers is to ‘run it the same and try to make no silly mistakes’.
Another to have costly mistakes, Orlowski said, ‘The car was awesome at the beginning but then I was in traffic and got a little annoyed because I felt I was loosing time trying to get by. I lost concentration and then made mistakes’. Having made a change to his Schumacher for the second round, he felt it was not a good change in terms of the full 8-minute run and they will look at changing it again for Q3.
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