Coelho holds overnight FEMCA TQ in China
Bruno Coelho holds the overnight TQ at the FEMCA ISTC Championship in China, the Xray driver topping the opening two rounds of qualifying today at the GDC Indoor track in Foshan. Having topped seeding, the World Champion would take the first of the 5 scheduled qualifiers ahead of Naoto Matsukura and it looked it was going to be a similar result in Q2 until the Japanese driver’s Infinity got stopped suddenly in its tracks by the foot of a marshal. While Matsukura would eventually continued to claim a P4 run, it was his team-mate Koki Kato and Xray’s Shin Sawada who would benefit to end the round with the 2nd & 3rd fastest times respectively. Overall however Matsukura still holds P2 going into tomorrow morning’s final 3-rounds of qualifying despite ending the day on 6-points together with Kato & Sawada.
‘It was a good day’ was how Coelho summed up holding the overnight TQ. He continued, ‘for the last one we tried some things on the car to make it a little easier but I think it was a little bit slower now, but it was safe to drive.’ Having found the car a little difficult in Q1 he explained, ‘It was super fast but I felt it was sometime a little bit difficult because I can feel during the run there are some moments where the tyre or something starts to be a bit weird and I need to adapt to it so I just wanted to make sure I can make 5-minutes and the car is consistent so in the final I have no problem. The car now was more on that way but a little slower in pace’. Looking to the remaining qualifiers in the morning, the World Champion said, ‘We will for sure try something in between (the two set-ups) for tomorrow morning.’
Returning to the pits worried about the impact to his car, Matsukura said for Q1, ‘the traction was lower so my car was a little loose but I still got second by driving around. Bruno and me are almost 4-seconds apart so I need my speed.’ On the second qualifier he explained that following Kato making the change for Q1 with good results, ‘I added more rear toe in and the grip was OK but still I need more, anyway I got unlucky.’ Hitting a marshalling foot as they crossed the track to attend to another driver’s body tuck, it was a big impact. Continuing the run, asked if his car was OK, the 2014 ISTC World Champion replied, ‘I don’t think so but I will check it now.’
Giving his reaction at the conclusion of Day 1 of qualifying Kato said, ‘For me it was OK but my first 2-laps I am very slow. This is a problem all the time, I can’t push at the start, I don’t have the rear traction.’ Having felt at the end of practice his consistency over 5-minutes was going to cause him issues in qualifying, asked if he had improved on this aspect of the run he replied, ‘my consistent was just ok because I just make a safe drive. I need push more tomorrow.’
On summing up his qualifying efforts, Sawada, stated, ‘It was no good.’ He explained, ‘I had understeer in the first one and in the second one the rear was too loose.’ Removing his side body stiffeners for Q1 to try and get more steering he said it didn’t work adding he found the traction in Q1 to be low. Adding new carbon stiffener, having ran lexan versions earlier, he also added PSS for the second qualifier. Giving him more steering he said the rear became loose. Running P2 after Matsukura’s incident, that lack of rear traction was something that would lead to a mistake at he end of the run that dropped him to P3.
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