Coelho from Orlowski as free practice concludes at WC
Day 1 of the action at the IFMAR Touring Car World Championship in California has concluded with Bruno Coelho setting the pace from arch rival Michal Orlowski. With 5-rounds of free practice making up the day’s action it was Coelho’s Xray that would set the fastest time in all but 1 round, the Schumacher of Orlowski the only other driver to top the time sheets when he set the fastest 3-consecutive laps in FP4 by just 0.009 of a second from Coelho. With FP5 proving the fastest run of the day, it would be Marc Rheinard’s Awesomatix that would end up third quickest for the day ahead of Alexander Hagberg’s Xray with Axon’s Akio Sobue and Mugen Seiki’s Ronald Volker completing the Top 6 times on a windy day at the Finishline RC Raceway track.
‘It was a good day I would say’ was how back to back reigning World Champion Coelho summed Wednesday opening day of track action. He continued, ‘Things are getting faster & faster and as we expected the traction is going up. The cars are starting to be difficult to drive and you can see many people flip and making many mistakes. We are getting closer to what we had here on our (pre race) practice so from now on it is all about small tenths every lap like trying to gain 0.001 every lap to be in the front at the end of 5-minutes and try not to do any mistakes’. On the state of the traction at the end of the day, he said, ‘we are now doing very similar lap times to when we were here for testing so I would say I don’t really feel it is less grip but it feels just strange, it is different. The cars are working in a different way but in the end they are doing the exactly the same as they did at the warm-up which was losing the rear the in the middle of the corner and through the round you go the more it happens.’ Asked if he would sum up the first day of the Worlds as Day as solid day, he said, ‘I would not say a solid-solid day but a very good one, a very good start I would say’.
Orlowski described his day as, ‘pretty good’, adding, ‘it seems like we found our way back to where we wanted to be because we got a little bit lost and towards the end it was very strong pace in FP4 & FP5.’ The reigning 1:12 World Champion who is chasing his first title in Touring Car after a very strong 2024 season continued, ‘Bruno is fast as well but he hasn’t done a full 5-minute run yet so I am feeling good for tomorrow. We made wrong change for the last one so we will go back for tomorrow. We just need to stay on top of things depending how the track changes, conditions today were quite windy and cold but we expect it to be less windy throughout the week and a little warmer, probably the grip will be coming up with more cars driving on it. Less dust and more grip, that is where our car is the best.’
Touring Car’s more decorated World Champion, Rheinard felt he ended the day ‘not far off’ adding ‘but my driving is not great yet, I think I can still improve there.’ Asked in what way the reigning European Champion said, ‘my consistency, to try to stay longer on throttle sometimes and I am overshooting a lot so I am not happy with my driving but the car is getting better. I think we still need to find something but so far so good.’ On the track conditions, he said, ‘From Run 1 to now the track improved for sure but let’s see how it goes for tomorrow when it is going to be cold again. We don’t know if the traction is going to come up again quickly or if it will be like this morning, I don’t know. Hopefully it is going to be traction right away.’
Asked how he was feeling at the end of the first day of action Hagberg replied, ‘Good, I think I have been in the mix all day, at least in the Top 5 pretty much all day.’ The Swede continued, ‘We are still working on the set-up and fine tuning it to find a bit more pace and try to move up into the Top 3 maybe. It will be interesting to see the pace over a 5-minute run instead of just 3-laps. I am fairly happy but I think there is more potential to unlock for tomorrow. Asked where he felt he could improve, the former 1:12 World Champion said, ‘we are trying to find balance between rear traction and front end grip and to fine tune the roll centre, small changes to find the best balance with the car. I think we are close and just need to work on the details.’
Winner of September’s official ISTC World Championship Warm-up race ahead of Hagberg, Sobue was another who felt his car was good but there was room for better from the driver. The Japanese former podium finisher said, ‘Overall my day was good but I need to improve my driving more and work on better lines. On a good run it is good but sometimes I go off line and it is super dusty so I need to tidy this up.’ Asked about his prototype Axon, he said, ‘This car is really good and the pace is good.’ Making ‘just small changes’ each round he admitted they resulted in ‘not so big differences’ but he feels the biggest gains for tomorrow are to come from his driving and a hopeful dying down of today’s wind.
Volker summed up free practice with, ‘It was a very intense day running two cars all the time to get more data.’ The former World Champion continued, ‘I had some rough runs but also some very good ones but overall I am very happy to be out there with the new car and I think we are going in the right direction.’ Ending up P6, he said that time was perfect explaining, ‘In the last one when the track was at its best I didn’t have three good laps in a row but otherwise I feel pretty confident.’ Asked if he felt he was in the mix he replied, ‘Actually I am not sure about this because I didn’t check so much results today as I was focused on my own car getting the feeling for it but at least I feel there is a high chance to be competitive. The track was very tricky today with the wind so I think this was the lowest grip we will have for the week and the track should grip up day by day, I feel we are competitive with our new package’.
View our event image gallery here.
