Ongaro kicks off World title defence with TQ run
Reigning World Champion Davide Ongaro has kicked off his IFMAR 1:8 Offroad World Championships title defence with a TQ run in Spain. The Team Associated driver, who was third fastest in seeding, would hit the top of the time sheets for the first time when he topped the first of the 6 rounds of qualifying ahead of Sworkz’s Juan Carlos Canas, the pair managing 13-laps efforts. Third fastest with 12-laps was Bruno Coelho ahead of top seed David Ronnefalk, both Xray driver’s opening efforts affected by pitstop issues. The Tekno of Joao Figueiredo was fifth fastest with WIRC’s Marco Baruffolo rounding out the Top 6. With the World Championship’s back to back return to the RC Redovan track widely expected to even the field between the Europeans and the US drivers, Q1 showed that the visitors still have a bit of work to do with TLR’s Dakotah Phend their best placed driver with a P8.
Reacting to his TQ run Ongaro said, ‘It was good. I was a bit nervous at the beginning but the feeling of the car was great and the tyres were ok now. We also made some changes from yesterday and it was better. It was easier to drive and I could be more comfortable.’ Asked how the run itself went he said, ‘I had one small crash after the fuel stop I just went a bit wide and out of the track and I think I lost about 8/10ths of a second, it was not a big one.’ Running Matrix Blackhole tyres, he added that apart from a clutch change for Q2 to get a bit more low end power, he plans to change nothing else.
Preferring to do his talking on the track Canas summed up his run with, ‘It was ok, one mistake but the speed is ok. I lost around two seconds on the double double’. Running his Reds power Sworkz the same as he finished out seeding yesterday, the Spaniard added that other than switch to a used set of tyres he will run everything the same. Asked about today’s track conditions, he replied, ‘I have less steering and it feels less grip but I still feel good.’
Failing to go the full 10-minutes with a finishing time of 9:55.683, Coelho said the heat was, ‘Pretty good in terms of performance compared to yesterday’. He continued, ‘Yesterday I was disappointed we were not able to understand if the changes we did were good because all the tyres came unglued. We had a bad batch of glue so I wasn’t able to understand the changes, so for today we are thinking what should we do, keep the same set-up or go back. We risked to go with the same set-up because we believed in our work and it proved to be super good but then we made a very stupid mistake’. Explaining the mistake he said, ‘It was like too much coincidence, it doesn’t matter now everyone is a hero and everyone is if it was me I would never but I did. I crossed the line and there was Baruffolo behind who was finished and everyone who was crossing the line was finished. So for me I thought this is my last lap, I did the lap crossed the loop and entered the pit lane but I had one more lap. My mechanic was not expecting me to enter so there was nothing he could do. You fail when you are most confident and I was too confident in what I was doing and I failed’.
Giving an account of his opening effort, Ronnefalk said, ‘Wasn’t bad at all, on track I didn’t have anything crazy happen, one lap I lost a second on it was like a 50 flat other than that it was a consistent run on track the problem was in pit lane.’ Confusion with which of the Baldo brothers had pitted, the 2016 World Champion decided to pit when he had Bryan ahead of him but it was Oscar who had pitted and Bryan came into pitlane at the same time as Ronnefalk. ‘I came in just a little too fast hit the pipe and my car got stuck on the entry so I had to try get the car away there, turn back out, make a loop and come back in so I lost about 5-6 seconds on that stop. Remove that and I am about 1-2 seconds off Ongaro so it was a good start, even with a mistake still 4th so I am very pleased with that. It confirms speed is there in package, just need to enter pit lane a bit better next time round.’ For Q2 the Swede plans to leave his car the same based on the current conditions, the sun not as intense as yesterday.
Summing up his strong Q1 showing Figueiredo said, ‘Overall it was clean, I had one mistake on the penultimate lap and then after that I was like I am just going to take it easy until the end so I lost around 27-seconds which would have been enough for 13-laps but I still got good points.’ On his car, the 38-year-old Portuguese said, ‘there is some stuff I have been trying to figure out since yesterday but yesterday the last run was good so I decide I was going to keep the car the same and if you do a good run we can then do small changes’. Explaining his issue with his current set-up he said, ‘I have too much dive in my front end, the initial corner is edgy so I need to be really careful with the first input on the steering’. His 5th World Championships asked about this year’s track he said, ‘Its always amazing but this year its difficult. Us Europeans got used to what we had here before so we could drive around more chilled, now we need to be on our toes cause there are some sketchy parts you need to be really careful not to touch pipes.’
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