Orlowski again in Q2
Having kicked off the opening day of the TITC yesterday by TQ’ing the first round of qualifying, Schumacher’s Michal Orlowski made it two from two this morning as he again topped the second round of qualifying ahead of Infinity’s Bruno Coelho. A very humid day in Bangkok this morning, drivers faced much higher traction levels than expected with Orlowski able to knock 4-seconds off his Q1 time, its evening timing meaning most expected that to be ‘rocket round’ of the four scheduled qualifiers. With Coelho 4/10ths back, it was top seed Marc Rheinard who completed the Top 3 a considerable 3-seconds back as the Awesomatix driver again made the wrong call on his tyre gluing. Lucas Urbain would improve on his Q1 effort by going one better to set the fourth fastest time ahead of the Axon pairing of Akio Sobue and Hayato Ishioka.
Summing up his second TQ run Orlowski said, ‘The gap between the cars was really small so Bruno started really close behind me which caught me a little off guard, it was basically like a final he was so close behind so it was for me to not look at him and get into my rhythm but at some point I put in a few good laps and increased that gap. We were both on the limit as we were far ahead of everyone else but the car was really nice. I made a tiny adjustment after practice today were my car felt better but such a small change made such a big difference so the car wasn’t ideal, it was easy to drive but a little too easy, but I’m happy to take TQ with a really fast 5-minute run.’ Asked about today’s track conditions he said, ‘It is really high grip, one of the highest grips we’ve had. Everyone said the grip for the race will go down but I think this is the first TITC when the grip is higher for the race than practice.’ For Q3 he plans to go back on the set-up change, adding ‘we’ll see what the track does, it’s cloudy and high humidity, maybe some rain, anything can happen.’
Having two mistakes in his opening qualifier yesterday, on Q2 defending Champion Coelho said, ‘It was clean run. I did everything I could but the track today had huge traction which at the TITC is not normal ’cause on the race days the traction normally goes lower.’ Chasing a fifth TITC win this weekend on his Infinity race debut he continued, ‘We were not ready for that high traction so we need to work on the car for that, my car was a bit stuck so we need to get more rotation for the next one.’
Reacting to his P3, Rheinard said, ‘Aah, I made more glue but it was way too much so it was pushing the whole run and I had to drive like an idiot to get it to turn.’ Having gone with too little glue on the tyre wall for Q1, he said, ‘what I had now would have be perfect for the night session, otherwise the car is fine and it’s just a matter of finding the right gluing for the tyres. I will try again less for the next one ’cause now it was super safe and I could run full lock almost everywhere which is not fast, lucky I still have a 3rd’. He concluded, ‘If I stay 3rd I am happy to stay behind these two (Orlowski & Coelho)’.
Asked about his run, Urbain replied, ‘To be honest I am fairly happy with my run, a couple of overshoots here and there but overall it was fairly clean, one of my best so far. It was a good fight with Marc but I lost it in the end. He is dropping but I am dropping even more than him in the end and simply not fast enough to the two guys at the front, it’s really a big gap.’ As to where the Awesomatix driver felt he was loosing time, he said, ‘I was close to keep up for 2-minutes and then maybe I loose half a second but I loose another 3-seconds the next 3-minutes and that’s quite a lot. It’s not a surprise, it’s been a trait on my side for years. I start well and I finish my tyres too much. I am sure there is stuff I can do with the car to prevent that but so far I have been unable to do it with pure driving so I need to keep digging.’
In Open Brushless it was Olivier Bultynck who delivered the TQ pace in the second round. Setting the fastest lap of the run, the Awesomatix driver ended up 2-seconds clear of the Xray of Adam Izsay with the Mugen Seiki of top seed Soren Sparbier completing the Top 3. Having taken Q1, Lukas Ellerbrock had a number of bad laps and his Awesomatix ended up with a P4.
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