Kaerup doubles to hold overnight TQ at eBuggy Worlds
Team Associated’s Marcus Kaerup produced another TQ run at the eBuggy World Championship to hold the overnight TQ in Portugal after backing up his TQ from Round 2 with another fastest time of the event in Q3. The Danish teenager topped the final round of Day 1 of qualifying at the Barcelos track from Schumacher’s Michal Orlowski, his advantage over the Pole 1.5-seconds. On a potential TQ run in the previous round until a late driver error, Sworkz’ Juan Carlos Canas posted his first Top 3 of qualifying just 0.034 shy of Orlowski. The big surprise of Q3 was Ryan Cavalieri, the multiple 1:10 Offroad World Champion steering his Mayako right into the mix with the 4th fastest time. Behind the American, Noha Ben Mohamed showed his run to the fifth fastest time in Q2 wasn’t a one off as he again recorded a P5 with Davide Ongaro completing the Top 6, the Italian again suffering a mistake over the 5-minutes. Taking the opening qualifier, David Ronnefalk ended the day with a 10th after a mistake on the final run to the loop. Despite this, the Swede sits P2 in the overnight qualification ranking thanks to his third fastest time in Q2. For his Xray team-mate Dakotah Phend it was a tough day, the American having started out the day with a 6th in Q1 but ending up 20th for Q2 after a mistake and then suffering a DNS in the day’s final round due to a mechanical.
‘Definitely a great run, I lost a couple of tenths in traffic but I managed and brought it home’, that was how Kaerup summed up his latest TQ run. With little else to report on his run or buggy set-up, asking him how he felt the track is developing, he replied, ‘the quad is getting quite beat up so you got to adjust the line because the tyre we are running on is not suited for a lot of dust so you have to watch you line because if you hit the dust the car is going to feel different for the next couple of corners.’ With the forecast showing a 20% chance of rain in the morning, asked about that Kaerup said, ‘I’m not too worried because we have a good rain tyre if it comes down to that.’
While most drivers would say they had an unlucky mistake, Orlowski said he had ‘a really lucky mistake’. He explained, ‘We made a change and definitely had more pace but we had a really lucky mistake. I tumbled over and it could have been a marshal and 3 or 4 seconds lost but it was a second or maybe less so I was really lucky. I had another bad lap so if it was perfectly clean I would have been close to Marcus but the car is too difficult to drive and I see from the drivers stand it is not doing what we want it to do. The track developed a little bit and went away from where the set-up was in the morning and yesterday evening so we need adjust the car for tomorrow. We have some good ideas we are confident about but let’s see what the weather does.’
Happy with his finish to the first day of qualifying after the disappoint of Q2, Canas said, ‘Q2 was my mistake, I think the pace was exactly the same and the time without the mistake would have be the same (as Q3), but I can do nothing about it now.’ On his car performance the 2024 Nitro Buggy Worlds Top Qualifier said, ‘I’m going slow but finally I am getting confidence. I am driving the car at about 95% so I will try something on the car for tomorrow.’ He added, ‘I also need to improve a little bit my driving so I will watch videos tonight and see how the other guys are driving.’
Asked where his surprise turn of speed came from Cavalieri replied, ‘Honest I don’t know. Yesterday was in the right direction just missed a little bit of set-up from Pekko (Iivonen) and we’ve all been working really really hard and been sharing as much information back and forth. I just felt like yesterday and the day before we were strapped on time. We could never really prepare the every time and we missed a few laps on each run so today we went through the car and I had a few things in the rear end that was a little bound up so I freed up the rear end and the car honest from then has been awesome. We made a small change now that I got comfortable with the driving I said I need a little more steering, a little more responsive, and the pace was good. It took me a few laps to get adjusted to it but overall it was just overall fast. I was 60th the first day on the track, got down to 24th yesterday and we shot up today quite a bit. It’s good to show up today.’
The leading Junior driver here at the inaugural eBuggy Worlds, Ben Mohamed summed up his latest effort as ‘another good run’ adding, ‘it was a little better in the 5-minutes so it was very good.’ The 16-year-old electric racing specialist, who joined Sparko at the beginning of the 2025 season, is happy with his Buggy set-up opting to leave it unchanged all day and that is his plan again for tomorrow adding he will just try and keep doing what he is doing, a formula that has worked well for the French driver today.
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