Phend fastest as Day 1 of eBuggy Worlds concludes

Xray’s Dakotah Phend has set the pace on the opening day of the inaugural IFMAR 1:8 Electric Offroad World Championship, the American topping the times after 5 rounds of free practice at the Barcelos Buggy Arena in Portugal.  Setting his fastest 3-consecutive laps in the penultimate round of the day’s free practice, many drivers feeling they made the wrong call on tyre compound for the cooler evening’s final run, Phend was fastest from Juan Carlos Canas, the Sworkz driver topping that final round to record his best time of the day.  The pace setter after the first three rounds, David Ronnefalk finished the day out in P3 ahead of Sworkz’ Elliott Boots.  With reigning Nitro Buggy World Champion Davide Ongaro having a challenging day, which ended in him being only 13th fastest, it was his younger team-mate Marcus Kaerup who led the way for Team Associated.  Second fastest in FP5, which was 10-minutes long with the previous four rounds having been 5-minutes each, he ended the day fourth fastest.  Another improvement in FP5 came from Tekno’s João Figueirdo, the Nitro World Championship finalist, whose family are the hosts of these World Championships, completing the Top 5.

Asked to sum up Day 1 in Barcelos, Phend replied, ‘I’d say Day 1 was a success.  We got some good speed so I am just trying some stuff with the car.  I think going out on the right compound tyre depending on the weather will be really important.’  Running JConcepts Dirt Web 2, he said the harder compound he had been running was too hard for the final run so he will go out on a softer compound in the morning and see how that is.  Doing ‘just little stuff’ in terms of changing car set-up, he said ‘the car already feels comfortable and has good speed’ so the changes are very much ‘fine tuning’.  On how the track evolved over the first day of action, he replied, ‘I think the last few rounds it stayed pretty similar, it really just depends how they blow the track off, and how much dust is out there makes a really big difference.  The groove is getting a little bit wider but it’s still pretty narrow.’  Regarding his own driving the ROAR eBuggy National Champion felt, ‘there is definitely room for improvement and I can get better by tightening up a few spots I am struggling with but overall I feel I am driving decent and adapting to the track.’

‘Finally, that was a hard day’, that was Canas’ reaction after his Q5 effort.  The Spaniard added, ‘I didn’t find the speed quickly and had to work a lot on the car but finally I feel a little bit of speed and good pace for the long runs.’  Asked if he found something in particular to improve his pace, the Top Qualifier from recent European Nitro Championship at the same track, explained, ‘I changed a lot of things over the day and they all helped in a good way and that is why the last one was good.’  Running the medium JConcepts Dirt Web tyre for FP5, he said, ‘maybe it was too hard for that one but it was good to see the wear over the 10-minutes.’  ‘Finally happy with the car’, he said explained, ‘now with the good set-up you can take more risk at some corners and I want to learn if I can do the quad as I can see some guys are doing it.  I will test this in the two free practices tomorrow.’

Ronnefalk was another pleased with his Day 1 efforts.  He explained, ‘I am very pleased how it went. I had a brand new car so it took the first two runs to bed in the drive train but after that I felt very good and very similar to the feeling I had here at the Nitro Euros, obviously I started with a set-up very close to that.’  Trying different compounds of tyre over the day, the Swede said he is ‘between medium and soft Saharas and it just depends what kind of feeling you want out there.  The mediums they feel like the car is a little bit lighter on track but the soft obviously has a little more grip.  It just depends how you set-up the car and the driving style’.  With 2 more free practices before the two timed seeding rounds on the Day 2 schedule he added, ‘We will keep trying tomorrow with the track.  I must say in the last one it was kind of dusty and you started to see some bigger holes out there which I have never seen on this track before.  It’s still free practice so they are probably going to repair it tonight so once they add more glue on those spots we will be good with a clean track again.  I don’t think the track was faster the last one, those who went faster was because they improved their cars.  I think the sweat spot was FP3, FP4 in terms of the when the track was fastest.’

‘We have been pretty fast and consistent all day’ was how Boots summed up setting the fourth fastest time.  He continued, ‘the last one I was on medium tyres and I think as the temperature dropped they weren’t quite right’.  Running Hotrace’s Sahara he said, ‘the temperature drop effects the track quite a bit and that was the only difference that run really.  The tyres went slick at the end cause they were just spinning on the surface.’  Asked his thoughts on the layout comparing it the Nitro European Championship earlier this month, he replied, ‘I like the layout that’s cool but obviously it is different to drive with electric being quite a bit different, but I think it’s better.  It is a bit slower, a bit more technical, but I think it drives better’.

One of the stars of last year’s Nitro Worlds in Spain, 17-year-old Kaerup was content with his practice pace.  The Dane explained, ‘I am not doing the quad, I wanted to keep it safe and know what line I am doing every single lap.’  Asked if he felt the risk was too high, he replied, ‘I think so but I think I am going to practice it tomorrow so if I need to go for it I can.  The main thing for me is stability and I know I have the pace by just doing triple, single.’  On his buggy set-up, he said, ‘we did a lot of stuff on the car over the day but we’ve hit it now and I think we are in the window for something good.  I think I will have a chat with Brent (Thielke) to see if he has any ideas for more changes for tomorrow.’