No surprises in Bangkok, Orlowski Top Seed at TITC

Michal Orlowski is the Top Seed at the TITC, the Schumacher driver clearly having the edge on his rivals in Bangkok.  Topping the first of the two seeding rounds in the middle of the day, the driver who stole the show on his debut at the iconic race last year, would prove he had an even greater advantage as the day concluded in the cooler ‘Happy Hour’ evening conditions.  Having been Orlowski’s closest challenger in the first round, that high traction in Round 2 would catch out Bruno Coelho, the Infinity driver traction rolling to outside the track fencing, as Marc Rheinard claimed the No.2 seeding for tomorrow’s qualifying with his time.  Rheinard’s fastest 3-consecutive laps would be over 3/10ths of a second off his good friend Orlowski and 17/100ths better than Coelho’s effort, the World Champion’s roll happening 2-minutes into the 5-minute run by which time most drivers had already got the best from their tyres.  With seeding seeing the Top 7 times come from Round 2, Xray’s Jin Sawada claiming P8 as he failed to better his CP1, it was Infinity’s Naoto Matsukura who set the 4th fastest time having struggled with too much steering in the first one.  Another big improvement and relieved to put himself in the top heat for qualifying as the No.5 car was Lucas Urbain, the Awesomatix driver having had a good showing last year to qualify 4th.  Carrying the hopes of loyal Tamiya fans around the world, after a strong CP1, Souta Goto kept his TRF421X inside the Top 6 with an improved CP2 ahead of the Mugen Seiki of Ronald Volker.  In Open Brushless, the grid attracting a strong European contingent, after a delay in publishing the ranking after a timing glitch in the second round it was local racer Mongkolphan Lomrose who is the top seed for RC Xpress ahead of Awesomatix’s Olivier Bultynck and Xray’s Adam Izsay who has podiumed the last two years.  It is a rule that once a drivers wins Open Brushless they can’t return to the class.  2024 Champion and reigning Pro Stock World Champion Simon Lauter acquitted himself well last year making the Modified A-Main and back this year the German will go into qualifying as the 14th seed just ahead of former 1:8 Buggy World Champion David Ronnefalk.

Pleased with his efforts on the first official day of these the 22nd running of the Thailand International Touring Car Championship, Orlowski summed up his top seed run with, ‘It was good.’  He explained, ‘We put together everything that was good earlier in the week.  We have been very close on set-up for multiple days and were just trying to find something better and we put it all together now and it felt nice for the beginning, the pace, so we are just going to keep it the same.  My base is strong both in the morning and the afternoon so hopefully it will be good tomorrow.  That was probably the most enjoyable run I have had all week so far.’

Reacting to the run that seeds him No.2 for qualifying, Rheinard said, ‘P2 is good but it is hard to drive in the Happy Hour.  The German continued, ‘Michal was already yesterday super fast in the evening and now he just repeated the same thing.  We don’t drive that late tomorrow so lets hope but it is difficult, really difficult.  Michal just gets faster and faster but lets see how it is tomorrow, he wasn’t that quick in the day time but I guess they tried something and know that when they come back to their normal set-up it will be fast.  Asked about changes to his own Cayote powered A800RR he said, ‘I didn’t have enough super glue (on his tyre wall) so I need to put more on for the Happy Hour but there is not much else we can try at this stage.

Asked about his DNF, Coelho said, ‘I tractioned roll at the beginning of the straight, it was Happy Hour now, and the car was gripping a lot and I probably forced a little bit too much for the conditions, and yeh, I crashed.’  Asked if he got any meaningful data from the 2-minutes he did run, he replied, ‘we always suffer a little bit in these conditions on super high traction.  It is our lets say negative at the moment which we have to work on.  During the day was super hot and our pace was pretty good but when the grip goes up a lot we suffer a little bit more and we need to work in that direction.

Happy with how his day ended thanks to pulling off a significant improvement on his earlier run, Matsukura said he made a change to the front end of his Speciale after he struggled with too much steering in the first round which meant he ‘couldn’t drive full punch.’  Going with a more understeer in the front approach for the second seeding he the multiple World Champion said, ‘in the beginning it was very nice but in the second lap I made a mistake, so after the lost time I still get a 4 and I am so happy for this but in the end after three minutes the car is a little difficult to drive.  So tomorrow I don’t know how traction is going to be but I need to change the car a little for the 5-minutes.  Tomorrow’s (Friday) schedule will see 3 of the 5 qualifiers run.

A driver who made is international debut as a full time Pro racer at the TITC in 2024, and still with Awesomaric, reacting to his run, Urbain, said, ‘It was more than welcome and great to get the laps together to be in the big show tomorrow.  I copied Lukas (Ellerbrock) in all his set-up so props to them for all the good work which is mostly coming from Max’s (Machler) work all week.  I was kind of desperate to find some pace and copied their cars and while it is still far from perfect it improved a lot the entry to mid corner but the corner exit I am still struggling.  I can’t accelerate as hard as I want, the car is bouncing like hell so either I have too much power or something needs to be done with the suspension, shocks, geometry, some along these lines.’  Looking to qualifying the French driver said, ‘I know in the morning when there is a bit less grip my car is a bit better on throttle and I can put the power the way I want to so I am a bit more confident for tomorrow that I have the 5-minutes but in the evening it starts OK and then it gets worse, every lap it bounces more and more.  I have not yet been able to solve that so that is the homework for tonight I guess to figure it out.  Thankfully it is 2 out of 5, so many attempts, many jokers, I don’t actually like it cause on a tie break anybody can score a good one and pass you.  I would much rather 2 out of 4 or 3 out of 5 but this is what we are given so I am going to try take advantage of it and send it.’