Kobbevik tops practice at 4WD Worlds

Daniel Kobbevik has topped free practice at the IFMAR 1:10 4WD World Championship, the Schumacher driver setting the fastest 3-consecutive laps in the fourth & final round of free practice in Sydney.  Topping the third round of practice ahead of Dakotah Phend, that time wouldn’t better Davide Ongaro’s FP2 time but finding almost a full second in FP4 the Norwegian went to the top ahead of Ongaro, who failed to improve on his earlier time.  Team Associated’s Marcus Kaerup also had his fastest time in FP4 to end up third quickest ahead of Burak Kilic, the Mugen Seiki driver finding a huge chunk of time to his improve his 3-laps by over 2-seconds to record fourth.  With his FP3 time, Phend completed the Top 5 just ahead of Xray team-mate David Ronnefalk who was another who closed free practice with his best run.

Reacting to his early form, Kobbevik said, ‘Free practice was amazing.  I was always at the top from the beginning and we improved the car every run so that was awesome.  The car feels good now and we turned up the power a bit, the package is good.’  Having said earlier he found his car to be a bit loose, asked what he had changed to improve this the 19-year-old explained, ‘I did more of what I did at home in Norway, even though it is completely different it worked here so that was nice.’  With the track getting ‘more & more grip’, he said, ‘It feels nice to drive now, it was a bit strange with 4WD before now for me as I didn’t feel at one with the car and I always wanted more.  I still want more out of the car, but we are at a good starting point for the seeding and I am just getting more & more confident with the set-up.  I will talk to Trish and the rest of the team and see what we will do next.’

‘Not too bad’, was how Ongaro summed up free practice.  Explaining his program over the final two rounds he said, ‘we tried the car with less toe-in in Practice 3 and it was some points better, some points worse, and for me it is better to have a car that is safe to drive instead of loose in the rear.’  The Italian continued, ‘For now I am missing a bit of steering because we made the car easy so we will try to find more steering in the front.  I tried different bodies.  I feel like the F2 jumps way better and has more corner speed.’  Having also tried JConcepts’ P2 body, he said, ‘in this condition I prefer the F2.  I think I will keep the P2 for the morning and Q5, which is the worst one, and then F2 or the S15 which I will try in the next one.’

The driver who topped 2WD Free Practice before going on to take the overall TQ, Kaerup said, ‘The speed is good on 3-laps but I am looking for some comfortability in the car and some mid corner speed.’  Asked what he tried over the final two rounds of free practice, the eBuggy World Champion replied, ‘I tried some more steering but the set-up we did I don’t know if I liked it.  It was faster but it didn’t feel too good and we are soon hitting the 5-minutes so we’ve got to work quick to get the car dial in.’  On the track he felt ‘it’s pretty sandpaper like now, the tyres are going pretty fast.  I chucked on a new set and it was almost getting to the point where it was getting bald.  I think tyre wear is pretty high.’

Giving an overview of his free practice runs, Kilic said, ‘The last one was really good, we changed everything on the car before the run, and the Mugen Seiki prototype is working well.’  Asked what he was struggling with in the previous rounds, he explained, ‘I had no steering and I had no grip at all in the car so we made the changes and it really helped a lot.  It was the last free practice so we said we will try this and it worked really well.’  Asked where the set-up came from he said, ‘this is only the second time we run the car, the first time was Hudy Arena for the Euros and we had no testing before that, so we took the idea from 2WD because we improved the last day really well and it also improved the 4WD.’  Looking to the two rounds of seeding which will end Day 1 of 4WD action at the Hills RC Off Road track, and decide the heats for qualifying, Kilic said, ‘I will change a little bit more on the car, just some small things and we will see what we can figure out.  For us it’s still practice and the most important race is qualifying’.  Asked his thoughts on the new track layout, he said, ‘It’s really really good, just the double section is really hard, sometimes you land good sometimes not but it’s the same for everyone and it’s really cool.’

Asked where he felt he was now at in term of performance, Phend replied, ‘We’re not bad, we are just trying stuff and learning.’  He continued, ‘the track is changing a lot so we are making changes to get the car better but then also trying to make changes for the track changing so it’s a lot to keep up on but I think once we get the balance on what we are looking for, which I think we are getting closer to, then it will slow down a little bit and we’ll just make small changes here and there.’   On the evolution of the track, asked if it was getting easier and more challenging, the American said, ‘I would say it is getting more challenging to probably find a balance for the car.  It is grooving up but it is also glazing over at the same time so it’s kind of a weird grip I’d say.’