Widmaier & Bayer take opening MIBO qualifiers

Sworkz RC’s Micha Widmaier and Xray’s Martin Bayer have taken the opening round of offroad qualifying at MIBO International.  In 2WD Widmaier took the TQ ahead of Bayer by less than 2/10ths while Bayer got the better of Schumacher’s Daniel Kobbevik to TQ the first 4WD encounter by 7/10th of a second.  Having opened Day 2 of the event by topping seeding in both 2WD and 4WD, mistakes on both of his opening qualifying runs would see Bartosz Zalewski end up third fastest in both categories.

Reacting to his TQ run, Widmaier said, ‘So far so good.  I just tried to do a clean run and not take too much risks as I knew Zalewski was faster in outright speed’.  The German, who along with team-mate Joern Neumann is making his debut at this the second edition of MIBO International, said for Q2 he will make some changes to get a bit more steering to try to obtain more corner speed.  That said he emphasised that a clean run was key but added ‘a clean run is not so easy here’.

Pleased with his 4WD TQ, Bayer felt he might have been able to better Widmaier’s 2WD time if he had known it was so close.  ‘I didn’t know where I was and was on my own on the track and if I knew I was only 2/10th off Micha maybe I could have pushed harder at the end’.  Describing both his cars as ‘very good’ he said his Q1 performance in both classes was ‘a very good start’ adding ‘the speed is there’.

Second to Bayer in 4WD, Kobbevik said he had ‘a clean run with no mistakes’ but as a result of the clean run he feels there is more speed to be got from his buggy.  The Norwegian said, ‘I will change the car for sure as there is more speed in it.  I will make it more aggressive and give it more steering’.  Setting the fourth fastest time in 2WD,  he said ‘it was pushing like never before so I go will also change the set-up to make it more aggressive too.’

Asked about his start to qualifying Zalewski said in 2WD his ‘car was good but I made a stupid mistake’.  The 17-year-old added he had ‘bad luck’ when he crashed as the marshal could see his buggy and he lost 6-seconds.   Describing the car as ‘really fast’ he said he just needs to improve his driving for the next one.  Also suffering a ‘stupid mistake’ in 4WD, he said a change to his XB4 after seeding had made the car harder work to go fast, ‘I had to push to get fast laps like Martin (Bayer) and Daniel (Kobbevik) so we will go back to the set-up we had before’.

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