Kaerup doubles up in Q3

With a drive that would be best described by the phrase ‘drive it like you stole it’, Marcus Kaerup delivered a second TQ run at the IFMAR 1:10 Offroad World Championships, the Team Associated reversing the order of Q2 when it was his team-mate & defending 4WD World Champion Davide Ongaro who took the round.  From the first lap, the eBuggy World Champion meant business as he opened with a 24.8-second lap in pursuit of Ongaro.  Getting his buggy on two wheels on more than one occasion, Kaerup would cross the line 0.360 ahead of Ongaro with Daniel Kobbevik bringing Schumacher team back into the frame with a Top 3 run ahead of his team-mates Broc Champlin and Michal Orlowski.  The star of Q1 with his P2, Burak Kilic completed the Top 6 with his prototype Mugen Seiki backing up his P5 in the second round.  With it the turn of Chase Lemieux to be the star of Q2, the American posting the third fastest time, it was to be a rough Round 3 for Xray.  Having finished just behind Lemieux, a mistake on the first lap that saw him needing to be marshalled ended David Ronnefalk’s run of Top 4 times while after his strong Top 3 in Q1 Dakotah Phend had bad runs in Q2 & 3.  In the end it was Lemieux who was again the best performer claiming a P7 after mistakes.

With his run looking pretty spectacular to watch asked how it was for him, Kaerup replied, ‘It was pretty fast out of the gate, I could feel it on the warm-up lap so I just gave it everything I could, I overdrove it a little maybe but maybe the diffs went too light in the end so I think we will have a talk about the set-up but it was pretty good.’  Asked about his Q2 run, losing out to Ongaro by 0.095, he said, ‘we tried some set-up stuff that didn’t work so we went back and it worked now.’  Put to him that he must be very comfortable with the Hills RC Off Road track given his driving style he said, ‘I am trying to force it around to see how fast I can go without crashing and I think that’s pretty good for the mains.’

Summing up his Q2 & 3 runs Ongaro explained, ‘Yeah Q2 was good, it was close.  I had a bobble in Q1 so I was a bit scared from that but actually I managed to TQ.  We were very close and we were close also now.’  He added, ‘I had two small mistakes but I think we are the same.’  On his car the 24-year-old said, ‘I am really happy with the car because it is really easy to drive, I don’t need to push its super comfortable.’

Managing a smile, Kobbevik said, ‘Finally a good one, the day hasn’t been awesome yet, we are still trying to figure stuff out with the car as it is not the same at all for me today.’  He continued, ‘We did some huge changes today to try and improve the pace, I have been lacking some rear grip and steering, that’s never a good combo but we are working well together in the team to try come up with some ideas and try to get there.  For sure we made a step forward in that last one.  The run was ok some bobbles here and there like some bad landings but the rest was clean and still too far off.’   Asked if he could salvage something from the final two qualifiers the Norwegian simple replied, ‘I hope so.’

Asked to sum up were he was before his break through Q3 run, new crowned 2WD World Champion Champlin said, ‘I believe I had a 22 in Round 1 and an 8 in Round 2 and then I ended up walking out of that there with a 4.  We made just a ton of set-up changes for the last one.  For Q2 I changed the entire car, like absolutely everything on it, and then I worked with it for that run.  I didn’t change a whole lot between Q2 and Q3 but the car changed completely.  I feel really close with the car, now it’s just finding pace because I think the A sort guys have now found a whole different level to anyone in the B sort.’  For the final qualifier of the day, one more round to go in the morning, the American driver plans to try to ‘just make it a little easier to drive off throttle coming into the corners and make it turn a little bit more and not have to force it into the corner and then go from there.’  He concluded, ‘I think I could still start in the Top 3 if I have a good run this round.’

Looking somewhat dejected, Orlowski said, ‘We are really struggling with speed.  The car is fast in different ends but I can’t get the car to feel how I want it to feel for my driving style.’  He continued, ‘Definitely for this track I need to adjust my driving style a lot and I am not able to do that.’  Asked if Q3 was a step forward, the Pole said, ‘Every run is a small step forward but we need many of these steps or one huge one to get there.  We are trying to get the car better for my driving but it’s really hard.’