Kilic takes final qualifier at Philippine Masters

Burak Kilic has taken the fourth & final round of qualifying at the Philippines Masters, the Mugen Seiki/Nova Engines driver finally ending Davide Ongaro’s reign at Asia’s biggest annual 1:8 Offroad race.  While yesterday threatened the possibility of rain, the record entry of drivers from 21 countries arrived Saturday morning to a dry & very hot track for one last qualifying effort and it would prove to be the fastest and most exciting of the four.  With Ongaro having already secured the overall TQ in the penultimate round yesterday, an early mistake from the World Champion gave his rivals the chance to go the top with Infinity’s Kouki Kato topping the timing screens and looking like he might finally deliver on the outright speed he has shown over the last two days.  It wasn’t to be however as he had a bobble on his sixth lap of 9.  This promoted Mayako’s Pekko Iivonan to the top of the timing screens but a bad lap dropped him off the top spot before a bobble on the last lap ended the prospect of a TQ run.  Having lost over two & a half seconds in the first half of the heat with a bobble, bobble the word of Q4, a recovering Kilic took over from Iivonan and laying down the fastest lap managed to get the TQ by half a second over Ongaro with Ryan Lutz only a further 4/10ths back after putting in his best run of the 4.  With Ongaro and Kilic the only two drivers to make 9-laps yesterday, today the Top 6 all broke that barrier.  Overall the result means Kilic starts directly behind Ongaro for tomorrow’s 1-hour Main with Kato lining up P3 ahead of his Infinity team-mate Naoto Matsukura, Lutz and the Sworkz of Mattio Polito.

Reacting to his TQ run, which turned out over 1-second faster than Ongaro’s best TQ run, Kilic said, ‘It was really good and now I have steering in my car.  It was just awesome, my car, my engine, my tyres worked amazing’.  Switching to a softer compound 6mik tyre for the final qualifier he said this gave him the steering he was after yesterday.  The Turkish racer continued, ‘I made a small bobble that cost me 2-seconds, even Davide make a mistake also.  It is really hard to go really fast without mistakes on this track’.  On the final, Kilic finding the heat in Manila hard going, he said, ‘It will be hard, really really hard but we will try our best to stay focused and have a good race.’

Summing up the closing qualifier Ongaro said, ‘It was good except for the first lap crash which gave me a 40.1 (seconds) lap.  I jumped and landed on the pipe, so probably that was 4 or maybe 3.5 seconds lost.’  The Italian continued, ‘the feeling with the car was the same as yesterday which was good after the rain.  I think there was a little bit more grip for me compared to yesterday.  Only that one mistake cost me the TQ probably but I think me and Burak are a little bit close now but 1-hour will be so long so we will see.’  As a winner of the race the last two years, Ongaro knows what it is like to race for that long here in the Manila heat.  Not planning to change his buggy set-up for the longer distance, on fuel mileage in the final, Ongaro said, ‘we tested and we have done like 8.45 so 7:30 should be fine’.  He then concluded, ‘the biggest challenge will be the heat, traffic, everything, 1-hour is going to be challenging for sure.’

‘Getting a little better, it’s more just me just being smooth on my inputs,’ was how Lutz summed him his P3, that result putting the American P5 on the starting grid for Sunday’s final behind Matsukura.  Describing the track as a little grippier today, the Kyosho driver continued, ‘the car has got good pace, and it’s just about me not blowing corners.  For the final I am going to go up in shock oil, 50cst all the way around just to kind of slow it down a little bit and other than that just rebuild and off we go.’  Asked about tyre wear he responded with ‘it’s reasonable’ explaining, ‘I ran the same one set on both cars the whole day yesterday so that was 45-minutes on them and they still have some thread so it’s going to be ok.’  On race mileage Lutz said it is a hard track on fuel, explaining he is getting 7:30 on the dot so it’ll be a risk to either do 6:40 stops cause it’s a bigger track layout or be safe and just do the 6 stops.  We’ll play that by ear.  An hour long final anything can happen.’

Appearing somewhat dejected after missing out on topping Q4, Kato summed up his run by saying, ‘I just tried to drive safe like the last one yesterday but the traction was a little bit higher so that was why I was faster but so was everyone else.  I tried to keep it clean but one lap I made a 40 something with just a bobble.’  Asked about the finals, the 18-year-old winner of last year’s Asian Buggy Championships finale in Indonesia said, ‘the car is very easy to drive and I think I can make consistent laps.  We just need to think about what exactly our plan is for the one hour.’

On a high from TQ’ing the final round of eBuggy ahead of Team Associated’s Alex Bernadzik, Ongaro securing the overall TQ as a result,  Iivonan explained, ‘I made some changes to my nitro buggy based off the eBuggy set-up I ran in the last qualifier and I felt that was the best the car has been and definitely the changes were really good.’  The 22-year-old continued, ‘the pace was also on point and it was a little bobble on that last lap that cost the TQ for me but it was super nice to be in the mix’.  The Finn admitting he’s not used to 1-hour mains, all but Polito starting direct ahead of him in P6 having previous World Championship or Asian Buggy Championships Main final experience.  On the final he said, ‘the car is super consistent and easy to drive so for sure it will be a good final.  For sure the 1-hour will be long.’