Volker Top Qualifier at MIBO International
After a perfect day of driving in the Czech Republic, Mugen Seiki’s Ronald Volker is the Top Qualifier at MIBO International with one round still to go tomorrow morning. The unique event’s inaugural Champion in 2023, the German and his new MTC3 have been the class of the field with defending champion Michal Orlowski having to throw everything and sometimes more at it to try and get ahead of his rival. Having topped the seeding this morning, Volker secured the overall TQ in Q3 before going on to make it four from four in the final run of the second day’s action. With Volker leading home the Schumacher in 3 of the 4 rounds, Orlowski himself admitting after Q2 that he crashed because he was having to push so hard to try and keep up with the on form Volker. While the race for the title at the third edition of the event put on by Volker’s former Yokomo team-mate Michal Bok is very much a two horse race, this year’s event is proving a happy hunting ground for Mugen’s upcoming touring car release with Volker’s new for 2025 team-mate Patrick Gollner third in the overnight standings. Behind him the Yokomo of Christopher Krapp is holding P4 while the leading Xray challenge comes from Adam Izsay, who after being best of the rest in the morning dropped to fifth in the second half of the day.
‘Pretty much a perfect day’, that was how Volker summed his impressive performance adding, ‘I couldn’t ask for more’. Other than feeling a diff change for Q2 wasn’t to his liking, he said, ‘I am still trying things each run to learn more about the car but every time it has just been so good.’ Planning to use Q5 in the morning to make a small change and run an old set of tyres again, he did caution that tomorrow is a new day adding ‘for sure Michal will be there in the finals and I need to be ready for that.’
Asked where he felt he was at going into Sunday’s finals, Orlowski replied, ‘we are trying to find something’. Working with his offroad engineer Trish Neal he said they are struggling to get a nice balance in the car between steering and traction. Acknowledging how well Volker is driving, saying ‘he is going very well’, the reigning 1:12 World Champion hinted he hasn’t given up yet stating ‘we have one more thing to try in Q5 and hopefully that will be good for the finals.’
While Izsay end the day P5 in Modified, in Pro Stock the former champion ended Saturday’s action by securing an early overall TQ. With Martin Hudy taking Q1, the next three rounds belonged to the Hungarian with Hudy keeping him on his toes finishing within a few tenths each time. In FWD the Top Qualifier was also decided with Philip Langner sealing the deal in Q4 with his third TQ run. Reigning Champion Stefan Schulz did manage to keep the fight alive by topping Q3 but was 5/100ths of a second sort of pushing the fight for pole position into Q5 in the morning.
