Orlowski to lead out Q1 at Worlds
Schumacher’s Michal Orlowski will lead out the opening round of qualifying at the Electric Touring Car World Championships, the Polish driver setting the fastest 5-minute run time in CP3 as official Top Seed Bruno Coelho traction rolled meaning the Xray driver will roll out 5th in Q1. Having set the pace based on 3-consecutive laps in the day’s opening seeding round, Coelho repeated the feat in CP2 to secure the No.1 race number for his car for qualifying ahead of Orlowski, Alexander Hagberg and Marc Rheinard. While Coelho again proved he had the fastest outright pace in CP3, it was now the full 5-minutes that determined the starting order for the first of the six qualifying rounds. Orlowski would end up setting that pace 3.5-seconds up on Rheinard with an impressive performance from Orlowski’s Italian team-mate Mattia Collina securing him third ahead of the Mugen Seiki of former World Champion Ronald Volker.
Summing up his CP3 topping effort, Orlowski said, ‘It was a good practice and I am feeling good for qualifying as I always had clean runs but on pace it is very close with Bruno as always. I am sure they are changing their car for Q1 but we tried a few different approaches in the practice today and we just need to make the decision to pick the best one for Q1. It’s feeling good because we are always fast and 5-minute pace is good and Mattia now is super strong.’ Asked about traffic in qualifying given the short lap, the reigning 1:12 World Champion said, ‘we saw now that it’s actually not such a big problem, I caught 2 or 3 cars starting from second. For sure there will be traffic but its the same for everyone and that other drivers will open when caught.’ While the finals will feature 10-cars, the qualifiers have been capped at 9 cars.
Asked about starting second for the first qualifier, Rheinard said, ‘Because Bruno is on P5 and fastest I hope he will not catch up to me quickly. I made some changes (for CP3) and it didn’t work so I will go back to what I had before and just try to get around but I am struggling in the right turns, the car gets loose and not good feeling. The rest of the track is fine its is just those two corners I struggling.’
‘Now the car is amazing’ was Collina’s reaction after CP3. He continued, ‘We change always little things for try to open the window relating to the temperature and for the moment we are on the correct way’. Asked if he and Orlowski run the same set-ups he said, ‘we are very similar, my car is more safe to drive but quite the same’. Very happy to be starting out from 3rd position asked how he felt he replied, ‘In my opinion we have a very good car for the 5-minutes.’
‘It was again the same, I traction rolled so we need to fix this problem if we want to fight for the win.’ was Coelho’s response when asked about the final seeding round. The reigning World Champion continued, ‘For the moment I think I am the fastest out there for a single lap but not really for the 5-minutes so we need to fix that. We still have too much traction especially middle end, too much traction on the car which makes it very easy to flip then. We need to find something that makes it easy for me to touch the curbs without the problem of flipping.’
In seeding for the Spec class, the day belonged to European Champion Simon Lauter. The German secured the No.1 sticker for qualifying for his Awesomatix and in CP3 topped the 5-minutes by 1.8-second from US racer and IFMAR President Eric Anderson who was seeded P6. Former European Champion and Awesomatix team-manager Max Machler made it a trio of the manufacturers A800R that will roll out Q1. Official P2 in seeding, Xray’s Shin Sawada managed only 2-laps in CP3 and will line-up 9th and last for Q1.
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