Jamieson from McBride in opening Asian Buggy C/ships qualifier
Sworkz’s Jayden Jamieson has taken the first qualifier at the season opener of the Asian Buggy Championships, a last lap bobble costing Kyle McBride a TQ run at the New Zealand event. Opening the first of the four rounds of qualifying strong to set the early pace, a mistake on lap 3 cost around him 3-seconds and he dropped to 4th but laying down the fastest lap of the run he hauled himself back to the top of the timing screens to go back ahead of Jamieson. As the only two drivers to go 10-laps, as McBride came around for his final run down the straight his Team Associated got crossed up, enough for the Aussie to eventually cross the loop 7/10ths of a second in deficit to his Kiwi rival. Behind Top Seed Caleb Noble salvaged a Top 3, the Tekno driver’s set-up not ideal for today’s warmer midday conditions. In eBuggy, Top Seed Kasey Dawson carried his pace through from yesterday with his WIRC registering the first TQ run ahead of brothers Logan and Dylan Toia.
‘We didn’t change a hell of a lot we just literally put a new set of tyres on and a lexan wing and gave it a go and it worked’, was Jamieson reaction to his Q1 win. Switching to a harder compound of TZO tyre, he said he made that call after struggling in eBuggy with the supersoft tyre and that was in cooler conditions. Asked about the wing change he said the switch was ‘just to try it’ but added he was looking for a little more corner speed and hoped this would help. With the tyre change he said it was hard to tell if the lexan wing had improved things or if it was the tyre that hindered the corner speed a little bit. He added, ‘the tyre was good at high speed but in the low speed stuff I was just lacking a little bit so if I can get a little more corner speed out of it in the low speed stuff we’re looking pretty good.’
Asked to sum up his Q1 performance McBride said, ‘My run was pretty good in nitro. On the third lap I had a crash on the right side of the track which set me back a little bit at the start but the car was good and I was clicking off some fast laps, I just probably need to get a bit more comfortable with the suspension of the car so that its a little easier and consistent but the speed is there and my driving is starting to get better and better.’ Asked about changes to his nitro buggy for Q2 he said, ‘we are just mucking around with suspension and we are just going to stiffen it up a little bit cause it feels like my car is doing a bit too much moving on power, so just to get it nice and settled so I can really get in to the throttle.’ Only P6 in eBuggy, describing that as ‘just a bit of an average run’, he said, ‘I am a lot more comfortable with nitro in general than electric and as I don’t race a whole lot of EP it takes me a little more to into the swing of it but nitro is feeling good and we’ve just got to follow along with eBuggy.’
‘It was OK’ was Noble’s reaction to Q1 adding, ‘I kind of just drove the car I had.’ He continued, ‘the car was a little soft in the rear and didn’t have a lot of confidence in the bumps but I dragged a third and finally had a clean round.’ Asked about the change in how the car was working today, the Asian Buggy Championship race winner said, ‘I think it was just because the temperature has come up a little bit higher than yesterday, it is more or less the same car. I am going to tweak some roll centres and springs and have another crack in Q2.’ On eBuggy he said, ‘it was a mess, the car was too stiff for the morning run so I struggled and had a really bad first lap and made two big mistakes which cost me about 10-seconds but drove back to 5th. It’s only the first round so nothing to stress out about.’
Fourth fastest in Nitro Buggy HB Racing’s Logan Toia described his opening effort as ‘good’ until a late error on the last when he ‘endoed’ coming into the last lap which cost him a 10-lap run ‘which was a bit annoying as I really wanted a safe run.’ The 17-year-old championship regular explained, ‘So many times last year I didn’t have safe runs and was struggling from the getgo so Top 4 is a good start’. Asked about changes for Q2 he said, ‘we’ll make a couple of changes to get more speed out of the car, we are missing just a little bit of track time in both buggies. Kasey was real fast in that electric heat, 31.6 is fast when the track is like this.’ P2 in eBuggy he said, ‘I thought I wasn’t going to finish, it was loudest car out there by a mile, it was like a nitro buggy going around. The ESC moved so it was rubbing against the centre driveshaft. We’ve got that fixed now and will go out again.’
Dawson summed up his eBuggy TQ run with ‘the car was beautiful.’ Choosing JConcepts Falcon’s he explained, ‘we made the right choice with tyres and the car was already in really good place, we’ve made very little changes to the car so far this week and there probably wont be anymore made. I just got to keep doing what I am doing in being consistent’ The 19-year-old continued, ‘I was a little worried if I had Caleb or somebody behind me that I just wont be able to keep my composure but I put myself in a good place on track and traffic was good so I could drive my own race. I had a traction roll on the last lap but I had enough of a lead. I am really pleased because I didn’t expect to be coming in with this competitive pace for the weekend.’ With Counties RC Car Club his home track, asked how the track was evolving he said, ‘its great, you just have to be careful, there are certain parts where is it starting to dig out a bit and if you hit it too quick or don’t catch the right angle it will either roll you or fire you offline, that’s what happened to me on the last lap. I pushed a little too hard into the infield and I think the wheel dug in and I flipped over but it was a factory roll over and I marshalled myself and carried on.’