Ronnefalk is Top Seed at Offroad Worlds
Coming into the IFMAR 1:8 Offroad World Championship in Spain with some new found confidence, Xray’s David Ronnefalk has further boosted his form for the most important bi-annual racing week of the year by claiming the Top Seed honours for the start of qualifying tomorrow. Fastest in first seeding practice from reigning Champion David Ongaro, the former World Champion went quickest again in the second round motivated by the hard charging back to back reigning European Champion Juan Carlos Canas. Over the counting 3-consecutive laps only 0.038 of seconds separated them. Third fastest for the round, that is where Ongaro finds himself seeded for quali in front of Boots, the British driver struggling with the increased grip and only managed 7th fastest time time for the round. Fourth fastest in the second run of the day, Tekno’s Joao Figueiredo is the 5th seed, one spot ahead of fellow countryman Bruno Coelho, the Xray driver having to pit during the evening run after a rear tyre parted way from the rim.
Reacting to his 8/10ths of a second improvement, Ronnefalk explained, ‘we made a couple of changes to the car for that one as I had a good car in the first one. Also I broke in a new drivetrain to put that one aside for later in the race just to keep everything fresh towards the end. The grip was up, we saw the track was faster the heat before so I knew that it was going to be a quicker run so I had to put everything together took a couple of laps for the driver to break in. I also had the idle set too low before going out on the track, it died there on me once, bumped it back up and after that it was really good to the end’. On tomorrows qualifying, Ronnefalk said, ‘It should be all good, feeling confident, car is easy to drive . Everything we’ve been trying is good, I have always been in the Top 3-5 let’s say and it seems like we are on a really good track here so hopefully we can keep it going tomorrow in qualifying.’
With the potential to give the host nation a home winner, Canas was much happier with his Sworkz second time round. He explained, ‘I changed things on the car and the tyre compound and I didn’t like it but for the last one I tried new things and it works really really good. Asked about tomorrow’s first day of qualifying, 3 of the sixth rounds on the schedule, the Spaniard said , ‘yeh, yeh I feel confident cause I not only made three good laps also the 10-minutes was under 50 (seconds). It’s a really good car to drive. Asked about further changes ahead of Q1 he replied, ‘maybe we try to make it a little safer for the 10-minute run nothing more’.
Checking in with Ongaro about his evening run, the Italian was running in Heat 14 of 15 for seeding, said ‘Overall it was better so we are happy’. Asked how he had improved his Associated, he explained, ‘We changed tyres and it was really really good. The only thing is they are running after me so maybe they can see if the track is faster or not so they can change tyres and stuff. On the 10-minutes I think I am the more consistent one so I mean that’s the goal for us and we see tomorrow.’
Summing up his second seeding run Boots said, ‘from the first one we wanted to try and increase a bit of rotation in the car and get a bit more speed but the grip came up so it was like a double whammy so it became a bit more edgy to drive so we’ll go back to our previous settings. The track is coming in now and the grip is coming up so we’ll see tomorrow how the track is but definitely in that last one a lot of people were saying the grip has come up quite a lot, you could see it watching the cars as well. We’ll go back to the set-up we had this morning just to make the car more calm and easier to drive now the track has become more aggressive.’
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