Leino Top Qualifier at 1:10 Nitro World Championship
12 years after he took pole position at the IFMAR 1:10 Nitro World Championship at Bangkok’s other famous circuit RC Addict, Teemu Leino is once again the Top Qualifier at the nitro touring car category greatest race, this time at the challenging Huge RC Circuit. The Infinity driver was the only one who could repeat a TQ run over the 6 rounds of qualifying at the 10th running Worlds, but it was his team-mate Naoto Matsukura who officially sealed the deal for the veteran Finn. Running in the second fastest heat alongside Toni Gruber, Leino’s only remaining challenger for the top spot, and having shown promise of TQ pace with a P3 in the penultimate round, the 2018 Champion denied Gruber the TQ run he needed. Matsukura’s run would turn out to be the Q6 TQ time, none of the drivers in the top heat able to better his time, as he became the 5th different driver to TQ a round. Also in heat group 5 of 6, it would be 2022 Finalist Chavit Saligupta and 2012 Champion Meen Vejrak that completed the Top 3 for the closing round. Overall, Gruber would conclude qualifying in P2 and together with Dario Balestri, Jilles Groskamp and Saligupta would go into Super Pole to battle for the other direct position into Saturday’s 1-hour main alongside Leino. With each driver getting 6 laps to set a time, that shoot out would go to Groskamp who put down the fastest lap by 0.043 of a second from Gruber. Gruber will line up on pole for the Semi while 1:8 World Champion Balestri will lead away the other 30-minute encounter, the Super Pole favourite having a rough number of laps over his 6 attempts and slowest if the four contenders. After topping seeding but only managing one Top 5 qualifying run, defending Champion Tadahiko Sahashi just made the Semi Final cut and joins Balestri in his Semi lining up P7.
Asked how it felt to be the fastest man in the World over a decade after he took his last Worlds TQ honours, Leino responded in typical Finnish style with a short, ‘Yeah, not bad.’ On the final qualifier he elaborated with, ‘I knew Toni needed to go faster than my fastest time and he needed to TQ so when I heard Naoto win it was already done.’ While Q6 then had little relevance to his qualifying outcome, asked how the run went, the 2018 European Champion of the class said, ‘I had the one roll, aside from that the track was not as fast as before but it was OK.’ Looking to the final, Leino said, ‘it is going to be really challenging to keep the car running for 1-hour, it will be a challenge for everybody.’ Suffering a servo failure in his Semi final the last time the Worlds were hosted at this track, asked about tyre strategy he said, ‘everyone will have to change but we will all break in tyres for that but then if you have a crash and chunk the tyre you are f**ked.’
On the podium at the previous Worlds, having come through the Semis after finishing second to Balestri in the 2022 Super Pole, on his Super Pole win this evening Groskamp said, ‘I’m super happy. I don’t have to run a Semi, I am already in the final which is super nice. I don’t know how many Super Poles I did but this is the first time I win one. Normally you have guys like Dario who put a little bit better engine in for Super Pole. I think now everything worked for me and I knew this type of condition at the end of the day was what I like. It was a good lap but not a perfect lap but I knew that was still good lap so I punched it over the line.’ Asked about the final, the former Electric Touring Car World Champion replied, ‘I have a little bit time to make the practice final so we can try some more things with tyres and how the car is working. With new tyres the car is easy to drive but as they get old you get more and more steering so you have to find the right balance.’ On tyres, the vastly experienced racer said, ‘honestly I don’t think that people will change in the Semi but in the final the problem is that the left front tyre gets too small on the outside and it can peel off (the rim) so I don’t know the strategy yet. Of course you loose a lot of time if you change tyre but on the other hand I don’t think 1-hour is possible without changing tyres because with that outside tyre at one point the car will drive super funny. It might work out changing only one side but this is also very critical because you don’t have the stickiness on one side and the car will also drive funny when you go out of the pits. We will have to figure it out and talk to the team what the strategy will be. We will also see what happens to the guys in Semis.’ Another point Groskamp raised was the potential to have to clean the bottom of the chassis during the race, ‘maybe you will have to clean the chassis because it gets so much sticky that the car actually starts to be more loose because it simply touches the rubber on the chassis. I clean it but before the runs but it’s all the way black and this is only a 10-minute run so in 1-hour it is going to be completely stuck with rubber, maybe we might even need to change the ride height, I don’t know. We can think about it because now we have one day rest.’
The only driver taking the challenge to the Infinity team here in Thailand, Gruber explained, ‘The last qualification we tried something for the Super Pole because we knew later in the day the track gets slower. We still had the possibility to make TQ overall but then we have to be faster than the fastest time of Leino but in the last qualification the lap times are not there to beat them so that’s why we decided to change something on the car. We tried another engine because we selected it as faster and it was faster but we also used new tyres and the feeling was not so good so we went back to the old engine. In the Super Pole now the car feels really good, I can push and don’t flip, I feel confident so in the end I am happy with the performance. It was just .04 that gots it (Super Pole) which is shit but in the end I am super happy because in the beginning we had 5-days of super scheiße and now to come back like this is really good.’ On finals, the reigning 1:8 GT World Champion said, ‘first of all 30-minutes I think it is getting close with one tyre set to make the whole Semi. We have to figure out maybe the left side. It is difficult in 30-minutes because in the end you have really low tyres and the chassis touches so then maybe you can flip so the risk is higher, but you save the time for the stop. It’s close for the tyre change or maybe drive the complete Semi final, we need to check the numbers.’
Summing up his TQ of the final round, 2022 Top Qualifier Matsukura said, ‘It came a day too late but we are happy to get one in the end. The car was good and the engine was nice now so I am looking forward to the Semi Final’. Having had a troubled first day of qualifying, the Japanese driver would finish strong, his P3 in the penultimate round and TQ added to a P11 from Q3 allowing him to climb into the competitive starting position of P3 for his Semi. On the half hour Semi, and with his confidence reignited by Q6, he said, ‘The plan is to just get through the Semi and put the car into the final and then see what we can do.’
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