Orlowski claims TQ honours on TITC debut
Michal Orlowski has claimed the overall TQ honours at the TITC in Bangkok, the Schumacher driver securing pole position for his debut at the legendary touring car race when for the third time in a row he topped qualifying. While it might be the Polish driver’s first time at the race that has earned itself the title of the unofficial World Championship of Touring Car, the race is proofing to be very much a repeat of last November’s official IFMAR World Championship where Orlowski and Bruno Coelho were the class of the field with their rivals fighting over 3rd position. The third & penultimate afternoon time qualifier would prove slower than Q2 but in terms of order the Top 6 were identical. While it was Coelho who had the outright fastest car on track this time round he once again could not better Orlowski, the gap the closest yet though at 0.058 of a second. Getting his tyre gluing correct this time round, Marc Rheinard got the closest he has been yet to the Top 2 as the Awesomatix driver got a P3, 2.9-seconds off Orlowski’s TQ time. Summing up the round’s finishing order as ‘boring’, Lucas Urbain added another P4 to his tally with Akio Sobue and Hayato Ishioka completing the Top 6 for Axon.
Joking with Orlowski that he just made what is billed as the most difficult touring car race in the world look easy by wrapping up the Top Qualifier honours with a round to spare the high profile TITC Rookie replied, ‘It’s been really good. I think our car is very good with the ever changing conditions, it works well, we have a set-up that works in high grip, low grip. That really helps at this race.’ Making a change to his set-up for Q3 he explained, ‘we are making such small changes but the track is changing and the car was really hard to drive now, from being very easy to very hard I lost the rear end a few times at the beginning and it allowed Bruno to catch me. Then I felt the car was a little better once the beginning aggressiveness went away. I saw Bruno was pushing and this allowed me to close back up and take the TQ by a very small margin.’ While pleased at executing the first part of the event so well, the 1:12 World Champion knows there is still a lot to do saying, ‘I am happy to TQ but I have been watching this race for many years and I know that anything can happen in the finals. I am just happy I have the pace to fight at the top but the starting position here I don’t think it’s so important.’
Appearing very relaxed as Day 2 of the event is in the books for the Modified drivers, Coelho summed up Q3 as ‘another very close run’. He continued, ‘I again had a clean run and the car is working well, I mean we are fighting for very close tenths like at the Worlds so I am really happy. It’s the first time we are here with the new team, such a hard race, the car is performing very well for such an early phase. Michal has already TQ’d, that is done, which gives us some room now to test different things on the car and try to make it different for the finals. Asked about track conditions compared to Q2, he said, ‘it was very similar but the sun was out so I could feel a little bit more drop over the run’.
Asked if he was finally happy with how he glued the side walls of his tyres this time round having got it wrong in Q1 & 2, Rheinard replied, ‘Yeah it was better’. On the qualifying run itself the German explained, ‘The beginning was pretty OK and then I had one scary lap were I went on two wheels so I had to settle down and two times onto the straight I hit the curbs too much and it got loose so I took it easy after that, I think I lost a second from this and a little bit by my driving, it wasn’t good in the last run. The gap is smaller for sure and I am going to try something different for tomorrow’. With just one more qualifier scheduled for tomorrow, the winner of the TITC 19-years ago said, ‘I hope to stay in P3 because this might be a good spot, with these two we know what can happened. I will try to be right there if there’s a chance.’
While Modified qualifier proved somewhat repetitive the same can’t be said for Open Brushless. Round 3 would see a third different driver score maximum points this time in the form of top seed Soren Sparbier. The Mugen Seiki driver would take Q3 from the Xray of Bowie Ginting, the Indonesian running in the second fastest seeded heat, with one incident hampering the run of Q2 winner Olivier Bultynck and ending the run of Q1 winner Lukas Ellerbrock. Ellerbrock’s Awesomatix took heavy damage after a crash with the Xpress of Thai driver Game Mongkolphan which was completely destroyed while Bultynck lost almost 5-seconds as his Awesomatix got stuck on debris from the collision. Overnight it is Sparbier who hold the TQ with a TQ and P2, followed by Bultynck with a TQ and P3, with Ellerbrock holding third with a TQ and P4, meaning its going to an exciting TQ showdown in tomorrow’s fourth and final qualifier.
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