Leino first to double in qualifying in Bangkok
12-years ago he was the Top Qualifier when Thailand hosted the World Championships for the first time and now this morning as the country hosts the 1:10 Nitro’s biggest race for a third time, Infinity driver Teemu Leino has kicked off Day 2 of qualifying as the first driver to deliver a second TQ run and move in on pole for Saturday’s final. With Day 1 of qualifying seeing a different driver at the top each round it was the Finn who closed yesterday’s action by topping Q3 and this morning he has pick back up where he left off to top Q4 from the Capricorn of Toni Gruber who opened qualifying at the 10th running of the World Championship with the fastest time. Overall it was a good round for Italian manufacturer Capricorn, a huge improvement from 2012 World Champion Meen Vejrak would see the Thai driver get a P3 for the round ahead of Q2 winner Dario Balestri and Swede Viktor Wilck.
Summing up his second TQ run, it being slightly slower than his Q3 time, Leino said, ‘I had the one mistake but still got the run by 2/10th so it OK. I had a 1-second spin on the straight so I could have gone faster without that’. On the mistake he explain, ‘It was just a spin on the sweeper, I don’t know why maybe I hit a bump or something I don’t know.’ Looking to the penultimate round of qualifier when he could lock in the overall TQ for Saturday’s 1-hour World title decider he said, ‘We’ll just keep everything the same and try to make one more. The speed is good, all is good.’
Finishing 0.268 of a second off Leino, Gruber said, ‘For me the feeling was good, we just lost the TQ run now in the first & third lap. I made 15.8 laps.’ Asked if he had particular issues on those laps he replied, ‘They were just slow laps, there was no traffic, it was just the wrong lines and it was a little slower, P2 is still really good.’ Running the second fastest heat asked if he felt this was in anyway hampering his qualifying being unable to gauge his actually pace against his main rivals who are all in the top heat he said, ‘For sure if you have the same pace as the other guys then you have no traffic normally but here now in this run I had completely no traffic so it was perfect for me.’ On his set-up the German plans to go back a little with the caster for the increased grip the track gets over the day.
Taking his World Title at the other of Bangkok’s famous tracks RC Addict, home to the famous annual TITC, Vejrak was happy to finally find himself in the mix at these Worlds. He explained, ‘After yesterday, I had a lot of problems, I just tried to keep today clean and get a run with no mistakes. I was getting a little bit faster each lap but I had one lap in which I had a spin and this cost me a TQ run. It was almost a 16-second lap and that was the difference to the TQ.’ Still happy to come away with P3, he said, ‘Now I am back in the game and have a chance to win again’. Asked about his Day 1 problems he said, ‘many small things but causing big problems like trust bearing break before the start of one heat. But today we have made a good start and now I have good points to make a fight.’
Asked how his Q4 had gone Balestri replied, ‘there was a little bit traffic and maybe my tyres were too small in the end, the car was too loose in the end.’ Finishing 1.8-second down on his team-mate Leino at the end of the 7-miute qualifier, the reigning European Champion added, ‘the start was ok but then they just got too low so we need to think what to do for the next one.’
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