Coelho retains Asia Touring Car title with dominant finals display

Infinity’s Bruno Coelho has retained his Asia Touring Car Championship title with a dominant display in the finals in Foshan, China.  With this year’s FEMCA organised race attracting a stacked field due to the Hongyu GDC track hosting the World Championships next April, while qualifying produced TQ runs from three different drivers, in the finals the reigning World Champion was untouchable.  His closest challenge would come from Awesomatix’s Lucas Urbain and while the French driver was closer in A2 he never really put Coelho’s title under threat.  Winning A2 to secure the overall victory but feeling his set-up change for A2 wasn’t the right one, Coelho would run A3 going on to win that with the first & only 20-lap run of the weekend.  While Urbain would crash out in A3, Naoto Matsukura fending off Michal Orlowski for P2, he would hold on for second overall while Orlowski completed the podium.  Ryosuke Yamamoto and Pekko Iivonen completed the Top 5 overall ahead of Matsukura and Akio Sobue.  In 13.5 Stock, it was also the Top Qualifier Shin Sawada who took the title.  After a bad start to the finals spinning on lap 1, the Xray driver won A2 & 3 from team-mate Adam Izsay.  Unfortunately the delayed time schedule meant ARC’s A1 winner Enrico Jung had to leave for his flight back to Germany so it was Jan Ratheisky who completed the all Xray podium.

Defending his title, won last year on carpet on the old indoor GDC track, with his A2 win on that final Coelho said, ‘Again we tested something on the car and it didn’t go the direction we wanted but the conditions changed as the track was along time stopped so we don’t really know the conditions but we always compare ourselves to our competitors and in A1 I had more pace and I was able to pull away and control the race.  In this one I was not really able to pull away.  Lucas was always there and I couldn’t pull away from him which meant the change we did on the car was not the right direction.  So I am going to drive A3 so we can improve the car.’  He added, ‘It is the only chance we have to compare with our competitors in the same conditions so I am going to drive again and try to work on the car to be on the right direction.’  They would find that right direction with Coelho once again the only driver to break into 15-second lap times and record 20-laps.

Reacting to his result, Urbain said, ‘overall pretty happy with P2 all things considered, obviously winning would be better but Bruno was the strongest this weekend.’  On each of his finals he said, ‘A2 went pretty well.  I made a small set-up change on the car and my mechanic Ollie Bultynck had a brilliant idea for tyre prep, which he didn’t even tell me, but the car off the line was much better than before and I could stay with Bruno initially, but Naoto went flying and distracted me and I had a bobble.  I pushed hard and could close the gap quite a bit so I’m happy with that.’  On A3 he explained, ‘we went even further in A3 with the tyre prep thing and it was too much.  It was pretty bad off the line so I just need to analyse that.  I had a silly mistake on my end which end my race but at least it did not effect the result.’   On lap 4 Urbain would flip his car on the curb and hitting board he broke ending his race.  He concluded, ‘Overall satisfied, and now onwards for a full week of testing so we can find even more.’

Reacting to his 3rd place, starting the finals from 6th on the grid, Orlowski said, ‘It’s OK.  The pace was good, I just tried to move myself up the order and I had some fun.  I tried to race clean and not take too many risk.’  The reigning 1:12 World Champion, who won the 1:12 Asia Championship at Hongyu GDC’s enclosed carpet track last weekend, added, ‘I am happy with the car.  It is hard to know exactly whose pace was what because we were racing in the final but definitely of the guys around me I was quicker than them.  Bruno was obviously really quick but my pace towards the end of the run was always very very good so I’m happy.’  The Pole continued, ‘Maybe it is better to keep things under cover a bit more with not the best result here but we have 5 more days (testing) and a lot of idea on things to test so there is a lot more to come and the Worlds will be very unique and special.’

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Coelho cruises to A1 win at Asia Touring Car Championship

Bruno Coelho cruised to victory in the opening A-Main of the Asia Touring Car Championship, the Infinity driver ending up with a one & a half second advantage over Lucas Urbain who came under pressure from a hard charging Michal Orlowski.  As the Top Qualifier, Coelho would break clear of the field over the opening lap of the large Hongyu GDC track, helped by Urbain having to battle his own Awesomatix as it got out of shape.  Starting from 3rd, Naoto Matsukura also had to fight with his car first allowing 6th place starter Orlowski through for 3rd before a second off, in which he got stuck in the track’s infield, dropped the Japanese driver to last.  Schumacher’s Pekko Iivonen was the benefactor finishing P4 ahead of Infinity’s Ryosuke Yamamoto.  In the opening 13.5T Stock A-Main, it was the prototype ARC of Enrico Jung who took the win ending Xray’s qualification domination.  Having secured the TQ, Shin Sawada would, after a jump start, spin out on the opening lap allowing Xray team-mate Jan Ratheisky go to the front.  Passed by Jung, he soon found himself back in front as Jung got crossed up but it wasn’t for long as the 3rd place qualifier again got to the front where he would stay to the end to win comfortably by 2.8 seconds from Ratheisky and Martus Benetin.

The only driver to break into the 15-second lap times, reacting to his A1 win, Coelho said, ‘The car improved for sure.  I was a bit afraid for the conditions because we had similar conditions the first qualifier (in which he struggled for rear grip) but we made the right choice (on set-up) learning from the first qualifier.’  He continued, ‘We went on the right direction, the car was pretty good, pretty solid, easy to drive and fast which is what we want in these conditions.’  Racing under the track lights he added, ‘It is very difficult to see the car, the car looks like it is going 10 times faster than during the day but yeah everything was pretty good with the car.’  Asked about changes for A2, the World Champion said, ‘we are always testing something new, at the end of the day it is the FEMCA race but it also a warm-up race for the Worlds so we have to test everything in all conditions and see what happens.  Of course I want the result but I want more the outcome of what we are doing on the car to have the knowledge for the future.’

‘Not too good’ was Urbain response on how A1 was for him.  The Awesomatix driver explained, ‘I struggled to adapt to my car.  I had a hard time trying to get a good reign on it.  It tried to kill me on lap 1 with a good old snappy snap.  So then I drove carefully and then Bruno opened a gap and Michal was catching so I tried to push and then it turned out I had massive understeer so I was totally wrong with how it felt initially.’  Looking to A2, he said, ‘I am not too sure what to do right now but I will probably adapt the tyre prep slightly for the opening laps and probably a mechanical set-up change  somewhere to recover a bit of steering towards the end.’

Asked where he pulled out his A1 performance from, Orlowski said, ‘We had good pace today.  Q3 I was really fast but Hayato was in front of me when his speedo shut down on the first lap and I tried to avoid it and went into the dust and started doing donuts but my pace was really good after that.’  The Polish driver added, ‘The pace has been good just not a good starting position.  We still have many days to test and I am not to bother about the result (of this race).’