Orlowski takes opening Qualifier at TITC
He might be the big name rookie at this year’s TITC but Michal Orlowski has acquitted himself brilliantly on the first official day of racing at the world’s toughest touring car race by TQ’ing the opening round of qualifying. Seeded No.2 behind Marc Rheinard, the Schumacher driver took Q1 ahead of Bruno Coelho as the defending champion suffered a spin and an overshoot. The lost time meant the Polish driver would top the times by 1.2-seconds over the World Champion who in turn had 1.6-seconds on Axon’s Hayato Ishioka. Having led away the first of the four qualifiers, Rheinard would start to struggle with his car having to revert to completing the run rather than aiming for a TQ run. Behind him, team-mate Lucas Urbain, who had to open twice for Coelho over the 5-minutes posted the 5th fastest time as last year’s Top Qualifier Ronald Volker completed the Top 6 in Bangkok with his Mugen Seiki.
Reacting to his TQ run, Orlowski said, ‘We made, or I made a decision, Mattia wasn’t to sure about it, to change the car a little bit because the grip was lower today than testing but it came up way more than I thought for Q1 so the car was really difficult to drive at the beginning.’ He continued, ‘Once I got used to it and also the grip from the tyre went away and it was OK but yeah lucky Bruno had that mistake. I’m happy to get Q1 done and nice points from it.’ Looking to tomorrow’s action he added, ‘We understand the car quite well for the changing conditions and we have a few options to change depending on the conditions. We know in each condition we can be quick, we just now need to make the right decisions for each run.’
Setting the fastest lap of the day in opening Q1, Coelho explained his spin in the qualifier. ‘I over shot the corner and then when I came back I collected all the dirt and spun out in front Lucas and then I tried to recover and I was doing good and in a good place but when you are giving your all the mistakes come and I made one on the last lap. I don’t know if I would have beaten Michal or not without that but still the car was pretty impressive, it was in me this time.’ Asked his game plan for tomorrow, he replied, ‘I think without the mistake it will be the same as the other runs before, the 5-minutes pace is pretty good so it’s just keep focus and try to make it tomorrow’. Asked if the racing line traction is was very fine, Coelho said, ‘it’s a bit fine yes and also today it’s a little bit more windy. I was not super wide but it was enough to bring the dirt and I completely spun out on a point you barely use the throttle.’
Pleased with his opening P3 effort, unlike team Akio Sobie who rolled early in the qualifier, Ishioka described Q1 as a ‘problem free, clean run’. The Japanese driver added that while the balance of the prototype car was good, he feels he needs to find a little more pace from it and he will take overnight to think of what changes to make for Q2.
Taking full responsibility his P4 run after topping seeding, Rheinard said, ‘I think I made a big mistake with my tyre prep. I know in happy hour it is more grip so normally I make way higher with the gluing of the side wall but I kept it super small. In the beginning it was super good when I could still use a little bit of the glue but during the run it just got too much grip in the front and the car became too twitchy to drive so I just slowed down to try and keep it on the track.’ The reigning European Champion added, ‘It’s an Ok start but it should have been third but once you open up and go on the dust one time you loose a lot of time. I was leading the beginning but it just got too difficult to drive.’
‘Pretty much as expected’, was the reaction of Lucas Urbain to his P5 in Q1. The French driver continued, ‘Bruno caught me and I had to let him by but then he made a mistake in front of me so I had to take avoiding action and then he caught me again. I had the intention to let him by two corners later and had a bobble myself and instead of a crazy rejoin I let him go so I lost a few tenths there, probably 1.5-seconds total in all three actions, without that maybe it could have been a P3. It’s still a better start than last year, I think I had a DNF in Q1 so P5 is a lot better so I bit more relaxed approach for tomorrow.’ On his car he said, ‘I think I made my car OK, it’s not fantastic but for the conditions I was surprised at how much better it was compared to other days so we are moving in the right direction.’
Getting a summary on how his event has been going so far Volker, ‘we were struggling a bit over the days with pace but now we got the car comfortable and good to drive but I was a bit too slow. I will take P6 considering I had quite a gap to the front but we will try some more set-up changes for tomorrow to try and get faster and move up from P6.’ Asked if all the speed he needed was going to come from the car or also in combination with his driving he replied, ‘now that the balance was better, but missing some pace, I felt more comfortable compared to the practice days with the handling of the car so I think tomorrow will be more positive.’
In Open Brushless, the class attracting 118 entries, it was also another TITC Rookie who took the opening qualifier as Lukas Ellerbrock steering his Awesomatix to a TQ run. Behind the German, top seed Soren Sparbier was second fastest 0.176 of a second back with Olivier Bultynck completing the Top 3. Finishing on the podium last year, having qualified P2 behind Top Qualifier and winner Simon Lauter, Xray’s Adam Izsay got his 2025 campaign underway with P4 in the opening qualifier.
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