Hebert takes Q2 after mistake from Payne

Having been eliminated from the opening qualifier, Xray’s Keven Hebert has TQ’d the second of the TQ Wire 1:12 Modified class at the MonTech NYGP.  Collecting a spun car in Q1 that led to a DNF, Hebert would again be the main challenger to Excelerate RC’s Ollie Payne who took the opening round with a dominant run.  With the British driver looking on a target for 2 from 2, as the qualifier reached the mid way point a slight touch of the curbing coming onto the main straight would result in his Prodigy 12 stepping out with the impact messing up his body.  Losing 5-seconds, while he initially resumed running in P3 he would shortly pull off to prevent any further damage.  Afterwards Payne felt he should have made the tyre change he was considering after Q1.  With Payne out, this promoted Hebert to the TQ pace and the Canadian maintained his form to take it by 1.129 seconds over the Awesomatix of Kemp Anderson.  Finishing P2 in the opening round, defending champion Sam Isaacs would tap out in style at the 2-minute mark.  Having had a DNF in Q1 and been the cause of Hebert’s DNF, Donny Lia would complete the Top 3, the man behind the NYGP still getting to terms with his new Cerberus Racing chassis which is debuting this weekend.

‘Finally made a full run’, was Hebert’s reaction after TQ’ing the second round.  He continued, ‘the car was good but unfortunately it picked up a push about 4-minutes in so I couldn’t really challenge for a TQ.  I knew I was really close to TQ but just couldn’t really challenge after 4-minutes.  Ollie had a crash I think 4-minutes in so I just cruised to the finish line.  Hopefully I find a little bit for tomorrow but the gap is getting closer and hopefully we can challenge him tomorrow.’  On his car set-up, Xray using the event to run a prototype of their X12, Hebert said, ‘I just need to get a little bit more steering for the last 4-minutes of the run to really be there.  He (Payne) starts off a little bit better than me, my car is a little more edgy up front but then it picks up push, where I think his car stays a little bit more consistent throughout the run.  So we need to make the car steer more through the second half of the run and I think I will be right there.’

‘The car is definitely improved from Round 1’, was Anderson view on his Q2 performance.  He continued, ‘we still have a little more speed to find but we are making progress.’  A faster run than his opening qualifier he said, ‘It was a pretty clean run but I had a couple of bobbles at the end.  I didn’t know I was that close to Keven.  I was still pushing pretty hard to see how much battery power I had left and went over a few curbs at the end.’  With the track open for practice this evening before the resumption of qualifying tomorrow, Round 3 & 4 on the schedule, on changes to his set-up the 24-year-old said, ‘I have another car I am going to try it and see how it is in comparison.  I don’t think it is going to be any better but its a different chassis so we will try it out.’

A long time Awesomatix driver but making the change to Cyrul’s new brand, on the second round of qualifying Lia said, ‘it was definitely better that time.’  He explained, ‘I am just trying different things because it is a total new car to me.  This is my first weekend with it, and that was maybe the third or fourth battery I have on the car, so with that being said it’s definitely a good start.’  He added, ‘I am trying things to learn and see how it works and figure things out.’  The veteran 1:12 specialist, who has the car’s designer Josh Cyrul helping him out between runs, added, ‘I’m not going to figure it out here this weekend but you know we got to start somewhere.’  Describing Q2 as ‘somewhat clean’ after he ‘had like 3-seconds of problems’, he added, ‘I’m definitely way off of Ollie’s pace but really not that far off a couple of others so we’ll keep throwing stuff at it and see what sticks.’