Kato goes top again in Q3 at Asian Buggy Championships
Having kicked off Day 1 of qualifying at the Asian Buggy Championships Finale in Indonesia with a TQ run, Kouki Kato repeated the feat at West Side Raceway as he opened the second day’s action at the top of the Q3 time sheets. The Infinity driver would set the new fastest time of qualifying by a massive 6-seconds, overnight track maintenance and a better tyre choice by the Japan National Champion contributing factors. With Q2 winner Naoto Matsukura setting the early pace in the 5-minute qualifier, until the first of two mistakes dropped him to P6 for the round, it was local racer Jason Nugroho who continued to be Kato’s closest rival. Setting a new fastest lap and getting very close to being the first driver to go 39-seconds, the Sworkz driver finished 2.6-seconds back on the Pro driver with the similar car of Christian Wolhuter completing the Top 3.
Asked about his run, Kato said, ‘My car was better. I changed to super soft tyre and it works good so I can make more push’. Content to leave his IFB8 unchanged for the penultimate qualifier, asked about track conditions, the 18-year-old replied, ‘this morning there was very high grip I think so better laps but I think the next round will be slower because the dust will come up and there will be less grip’. With this in mind and his car ‘working good’, he said the focus will be on working on his consistency as it is one area he feels there is room for improvement in.
‘I think it was OK, I am pretty satisfied with it’, was Nugroho reaction after Q3. Having had suspected radio glitches yesterday, he switched radio for Day 2’s qualifying explaining, ‘I switched back to my older controller and I think it was a bit different to my previous one so it took some time for me to readjust but I think overall it was OK.’ Asked if he felt the radio change cured his issues he said, ‘I had a similar problem at the start once again like yesterday when the car was out of the pit so I am trying to change to a different servo model to make sure it is the servo and not the controller.’ Suffering some traffic on the last lap, he said he was pretty happy with his result and his fastest lap time and planning to leave his car unchanged for Round 4 he said his big focus is to get the radio issue sorted ahead of tomorrow’s final, the Main here in Jakarta a 1-hour race.
His 3rd Top 3 run, Wolhunter summed up his latest effort by saying, ‘Yeh it was alright.’ The ABC Australia podium finisher explained, ‘I had a little bobble going onto the off camber. The track has changed quite a bit so it’s a lot dustier now and with the bars (tyres) when you are off line it’s very slippery so that cost me some time and then I made a little mistake on the double coming towards us so considering the mistakes I had I am still happy with the result’. Running Jekto J1 tyres on his buggy, he plans to continue with them saying, ‘I’ll stick with the tyre, the tyre is fast so I just need to stay on the line’.
The host of the Asian Buggy Championships first visit to Indonesia and responsible for the track build that has been praised by all the drivers, Adrian Wicaksono said, ‘Fourth was the best I could do, the Top 3 were so much faster than me but I was consistent, had zero mistakes and it got me 4th’. Asked how he felt his track creation is holding up, the Team Associated driver said, ‘I think this morning the track is slightly better because they did maintenance and some water last night. I think it was in much better shape then the last run yesterday.’ On his car he said, ‘I’m going to change the rear diff and try to go lower, in the tight hairpins I think my car is a little lazy so we will go down in the diff and see how it goes.’
Completing the Top 5 for the round, Rama Tribudiman summed up his result with ‘It was quite OK.’ With West Side Raceway his local track, he continued, ‘The traction was good this morning and my car was good but we are talking about racing against world class drivers. I am a newb you know but it was good fun out there.’ Raising the diffs in his Kyosho prototype for Q3, he plans to raise the front diff further for Round 4. Running the same car as Ryan Lutz and the rest of the Kyosho factory team used at the IFMAR World Championship in Spain, asked how he came about to having a car with the same upcoming parts releases on it, he explained, ‘I am not a special driver for Kyosho or anything but I am good friends with [Yuichi] Kanai (famed Kyosho buggy designer) so he gave me the parts to try.’