Mongkolphan takes penultimate qualifier in Thailand
Thai driver Game Mongkolphan claimed a surprise TQ run in the penultimate round of qualifying at the IFMAR 1:10 Nitro World Championship as he became the fourth different driver to top the times at the challenging Huge RC Circuit in Bangkok. A finalist when the track hosted the same World Championship 10-years-old Mongkolphan would take Q5 from Capricorn’s Toni Gruber with former World Champion Naoto Matsukura finally producing a strong run to complete the Top 3 ahead 2022 finalist Chavit Saligupta. A driver who was capable of wrapping up the overall TQ with one round to go it wasn’t to be for Q3 & 4 winner Teemu Leino, the Finn struggling with his set-up in the fifth round. Fastest in Q2, Dario Balestri found himself with a P5 for the round.
‘This is so very crazy to TQ with so many top drivers here, I am just the local driver so it is unbelievable’, was Mongkolphan reaction to taking a World Championship TQ at his home track. The 36-year-old Infinity driver continued, ‘I had a lot of mistakes before, sometimes flip, sometime open a little bit wide but now the time is really stable. No fast like before stable.’ Asked about changes for the final qualifier, the Bangkok driver replied, ‘We change only the gear diff, more harder because I drive really soft and now I follow what the other (Infinity) drivers do’.
Summing up his latest qualifying effort, Gruber said, ‘For this run we had the option to use new tyres or maybe a mix of the first set and the second set, we decided to go with the small tyres but in the end we ran out of tyre and the chassis was touching the track.’ The 1:8 GT World Champion continued, ‘now we have to use new ones, we have to see how the car works but normally with new tyres we have less steering and it’s more critical to flip. We will see because before we didn’t have a car working like it is now to try new tyres so we will see if it works or not.’
‘Finally I can drive but the last lap I made a mistake and lost 1-second. Without it was an easy TQ’, was Matsukura’s response to recording his first Top 10 run. The multiple discipline World Champion who is running in the second fastest heat along with Gruber explained, I changed clutch for the last round yesterday because it was shit before. That run was good but then I made two mistakes that cost be 7-seconds. In the first one this morning I had a problem with the side pulley and didn’t start but now everything was good except I had a mistake on the last lap’. Switching to the same clutch set-up as his team-mate Leino, he said this gave him a more consistent & less difficult car adding his ‘engine felt broken’ with the previous clutch. Needing a good Q6 run to round out qualifying and try move himself up the ranking into a better starting position in the Semi Finals, the 2018 Champion feels he has the car to get a TQ and says the plan is to ‘push, push’.
Asked what his issue was in Q5, Leino laughed and replied, ‘we tried a change on the set-up and it was not drivable’. The Finn, who is chasing a repeat overall TQ he achieved here at the same track a decade ago explain, ‘It was just a little change but this track is extremely sensitive to changes. For the next one we will go back to what we had before.’
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