Rheinard wins A1 as Volker & Coelho tangle at TITC
Marc Rheinard has taken the win in the opening A-Main at the TITC, the Awesomatix handed the lead after Bruno Coelho made contact with Top Qualifier Ronald Volker as he challenged the Mugen driver’s lead. With the Top 2 quickly pulling clear off the field, Rheinard’s passage to the front started when he capitalised on a mistake from a struggling Alexander Hagberg to go to third. Starting third on the grid, Hagberg afterwards described his car as being ‘like driving on ice’ before contact from Naoto Matsukura put him out of the race with a broken car. With Volker and Coelho still locked in battle at the front as the race passed the half way distance, Rheinard would be gifted the lead as Coelho ran into the rear of Volker after the chicane. With enough of a gap to resume racing in the lead, unfortunately the impact had broken the anti tuck on Volker’s car and as the German tried to turn around having been spun his car flipped. As Coelho waited on Volker, Rheinard went to the front where he would stay finishing 1.6 seconds ahead of the Infinity of Matsukura. Battling their way back up through the order Volker would finished 3rd with Coelho right behind in 4th.
‘That’s what I needed’, was Rheinard’s reaction after A1. He continued, ‘Hagberg’s car didn’t work good in A1 and it took a long time to get by him. I finally passed him when he made a small mistake and I was able to get down his inside. I had a clean track in front so I was trying to close the gap on the leaders but ended up having two rough laps and lost about 6/10ths. Then I had to get back into my rhythm. I didn’t see the lead crash but when I passed them I could see they where slow at getting moving again so once I was in the lead I drove slowly to the end.’ Asked if it was ‘game on’ for A2, the multiple World Champion said, ‘the car is better today so we’ll see what we can do. Maybe the same thing can happen again.’
Asked his thoughts on the incident Volker replied, ‘It’s just a shit situation. He hit me and broke the body tuck and the body caught the tyre. It was absolutely unnecessary.’ He continued, ‘everything felt good and I felt confident we were pulling away from the rest. Now we must find a better body tuck and fix the body.’
Coelho summed up the race by saying, ‘It was an intense final and I touched Volker after the chicane. It was a very close race but I was not expecting him to stop as much there. Still it’s my fault and unfortunately he had a body tuck.’ Something that ruined both their races as the defending TITC Champion waited on a marshal to fix Volker’s body. Looking to A2, Coelho said, ‘I will try to keep the pressure on him again but be careful in the slow corners. The car is very good so I will try to bring home the win in the next final.’
View our event image gallery here.
