Champlin fastest in 3rd practice
The third round of practice at the 4WD Electric Offroad World Championship saw Broc Champlin set the pace, the Schumacher driver fastest over 3-consecutive laps ahead of Spencer Rivkin. As expected US drivers are featuring strongly. Ryan Maifield completed the Top 3 ahead of Dakotah Phend and Dustin Evans with defending Champion Bruno Coelho the best of the overseas visitors to Hobby Action RC Raceway with the 6th fastest time ahead of newly crowned European 2WD Champion Marcus Kaerup, David Ongaro and Michal Orlowski. Commenting on his latest run Champlin said, ‘We made a lot of improvements that round. I changed back to my testing set-up after making a few changes earlier than were not very good’. Asked how he is getting to grips with the track, he replied, ‘you definitely need to be patient on entry into some of the corners. It will be better with new tyres but I’ll make a small change to get a bit more bite on throttle and go from there’.
‘We’re circulating’ was Rivkin’s response when asked how he felt things were going three rounds in. The Team Associated star continued, ‘I am driving to what the cars potential is. I feel the track is still pretty polished but we make some tweaks and it is feeling really good & consistent on the whoops’. He concluded, ‘the focus now is on being more disciplined out there’.
Summing up his practice runs so far, Maifield said, ‘It not bad, it’s going alright. We are making small changes here and there so we’ll keep driving around and see what happens’. Asked how he likes the track layout the 2017 World Champion said, ‘It flows well. The surface floats around but it seems to be starting to settle down’.
Leading the TLR challenge, Phend said his practice is going ‘pretty good’ adding, ‘we are tinkering around here and there and able to put in solid runs but we are still waiting for the track to come around’. The ROAR Champion who was just off the fastest overall time for the round set by Rivkin, said, ‘its important to hit your marks and to do that you need to be pretty patient out there’.
‘It’s tough’, was how Coelho summed up how he felt practice us going. The Xray driver explained, ‘we are missing a bit of steering in the 180 corners and sometimes we are lacking a bit of stability but I think we are slowly getting there’. For the final round of practice before Day 1 of the Championships ends with two seeding rounds, the World Champion plans to adjust the set-up to try get more stability. He said he is loosing the rear of the buggy a little and they need to solve that problem first.
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