Volker takes opening qualifier at FIRC
After his struggles in seeding practice, Mugen Seiki’s Ronald Volker bounced back in qualifying to take the opening round at the Foshan Invitational RC Championship in China ahead of the Awesomatix of Vening Zhuo and Xray’s Marco Ma. Finding himself in the second fastest after his lap times dropped by 2-seconds from free practice, Volker had a busy opening qualifying run as he avoided the traffic with late contact with a lapped car costing him some time. Despite this the German was 3-seconds clear of Zhuo as his main rivals Yugo Nagashima and Simon Nicholson both had issues. The Top Seed for qualifying Nagashima lead away the top heat but a mistake by the Japanese driver in the chicane meant his Xpress needed marshalling and with 4.5 seconds lost he finish P4. Starting directly behind Nagashima, Nicholson looked to benefit from the mistake but inside the final 30-seconds the Yokomo drivers pinion came undone and his run was over.
‘I was right about my tyres not being wet enough’, was Volker’s reaction to his TQ run having reported after the seeding round that he believed his drop off in pace was due to a faulty additive bottle. He continued, ‘It was a bit difficult with the traffic. I lost half a second on the last lap with contact and overall it was difficult to stay focused for the run having to watch out for traffic. I don’t know if they will do a regroup or not but it would be better for all of us’. On his car, the former World Champion said he ‘wont change anything’ as he expects the handout Sweep tyre to get better each run adding ‘everyone is going to improve and get faster’.
Zhuo said his car started really good but after 2-minutes started to lose grip. Overall he said it was clean run, but the Chinese driver feels there is more time to come by improving the consistency of the car over 5-minutes and he will discuss with his mechanic what changes they can make to reduce the drop off in grip.
18-year-old Ma said he had ‘some mistakes’ in his opening effort adding his car felt a little unstable at times. Chinese National Vice Champion in Modified Touring Car and National Champion in 1:8 GT, the promising Chinese racer plans to make changes for Q2 to try improve the car while also trying to tidy up his driving. In terms of outright pace Ma’s fastest lap was just 1/100th of second of Volker.
Clearly frustrated with his crash after riding the dots too much and flipped his XQ11, something he was quick to point out was ‘my mistake’, Nagashima said the Q1 track conditions didn’t suit his car like in seeding practice and he struggled with a lack of grip. The 28-year-old said he we wasn’t sure if he would change the car for Q2 feeling he might just need to work on his driving having made changes to his ESC yesterday which he might need to adapt more too.
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