Iivonen takes opening ABC qualifier in Jakarta
Mayako’s Pekko Iivonen has TQ’d the opening qualifier at the concluding round of the 2026 Asian Buggy Championships in Jarkata, Indonesia. The Finn took the first of the five scheduled qualifiers at West Side Raceway ahead of Top Seed Alex Bernadzik, the Team Associated driver 2.7-seconds off the TQ pace after a slow start on new tyres. Making it three different manufacturers in the Top 3, Sparko’s new FEMCA Champion Jayden Edmunds was a similar margin off his fellow countryman Bernadzik to open with a P3 effort. While taking the opening TQ in eBuggy ahead of Edmunds with his Team Associated, Hyunkyu Jung encountered traffic on the opening laps of his first nitro qualifier hampering his chances of a double, but it was a costly mistake on the teenager’s penultimate lap that meant the 4th fastest for Q1. Infinity’s Jason Nugroho upheld home honours as he set the fifth fastest time ahead of the Mugen Seiki of Australian teenager Zac Foster.
Overall pleased with his opening run Iivonen said, ‘I had a couple of smaller mistakes but nothing huge. The track is more challenging today and definitely has less grip but I was able to make some changes to the car which made it much much better and I think that should be fine for Q2 also.’ With this his second outing of the Asian Buggy Championships’ fourth season, him taking his first overall Nitro TQ earlier this year in Malaysia, Iivonen cautioned that, ‘my tyres are looking a bit worn out so hopefully they will last because I don’t have so many of them. I will hold a new set for the last qualifier tomorrow. They tend to wear out when you are using additive.’
Summing up his opening qualifier, Bernadzik said, ‘It started off a bit slow, I had a new set of tyres on and they took a little bit of time to come in but mid to end of the run the car was pretty good.’ Setting the fastest lap of Q1, the Australian continued, ‘I was getting close and then on the last lap I made a couple of silly errors’. Asked about tyre wear, he replied, ‘It depends. If I sauce them like everyone else is then the wear is starting to up come up a little bit, so it is going to be something that we are going to keep an eye on. At the moment it is not too bad.’ On changes for Q2 he said, ‘No, we’ll just run what we’ve run, the car was good yesterday at this time of the afternoon so we’ll just trust it and drive it.’
Giving a run down on his Q1, newly crowned FEMCA Champion Edmunds said it was ‘pretty good, pretty clean, and the car was working well.’ The 20-year-old added, ‘It was lacking a little bit of grip to the other three so I am going to try and find that but the car is really easy to drive, just need to find that last little bit.’ Asked if that missing edge was in the tyres , tyre prep, or car set-up, he said, ‘I think it something in the car that I need to find. I have been on the same sort of tyre prep, I haven’t really deviated too much, so maybe it is in that (the tyres) but I think it’s safer now to stay with what I have got and continue to work with the car.’
‘I think the pace was there to fight with Pekko for the TQ but I had some traffic and one silly mistake’, was how Jung described his run. He elaborated by saying, ‘I had one mistake on the right side and that cost me 4-seconds. Traffic on the first and second laps cost me 2-seconds and I would say I was mentally broken after that.’ He continued, ‘It’s OK, its only Q1 and we have four more rounds.’ On changes to his car for the second & final qualifier of today’s action, the Korean said, ‘My car definitely has the pace so we don’t need to change anything. We will just go into Q2 and hopefully we have no problem with traffic this time.’