Orlowski tops first seeding round at eBuggy Worlds
Michal Orlowski has topped the opening round of seeding practice at the inaugural eBuggy World Championship, the Schumacher driver fastest from the similar car of Xray’s Dakotah Phend. Over the first of the two 10-minute seeding rounds, the Polish driver improved on his P6 Free Practice pace by half a second with Phend just 0.15 of a second off over his best 3-consecutive laps of the Barcelos track. Sworkz’s Juan Carlos Canas would complete the Top 3 ahead of David Ronnefalk with Mayako’s Pekko Iivonen backing up his strong final free practice run to set the 5th fastest time. Having topped free practice, Marcus Kaerup would open seeding with a P6, the Team Associated driver unable to match his FP7 pace and putting the 0.8 of a second lost down to not driving as well.
Summing up his first appearance at the top of the timing screen so far here in Portugal, Orlowski said, ‘We’ve been making small changes from the very beginning of the race and FP7 was a very positive run and now I just got a bit more used to the car and put some good laps in. I was doing the triple single for the first part of the run and that is when I did the fastest 3-laps and then I thought should have good enough 3-laps and I tried the quad but it wasn’t working out in the dusty conditions we have now.’ Asked what he had done to the car in term of set-up changes he replied, ‘Not much’. He continued, ‘we had our experience from the Nitro Euros and the looked at the set-up from the other teams and started with that. We have been playing with diffs, pistons, just stuff like that. The geometry of the car is same as we started.’ On the track layout revisions from the European Championship, ‘I really like it, it is an awesome track. It is a much better layout than the Nitro Euros I think. I hate the quad, I think it is horrible for racing and for marshalling I am marshalling number 10 and I am scared ever time a car goes over there. These two jump sections should have been changed from the Euro, other than that I really like the layout.’
‘Solid’ was how Phend summed up his first seeding effort. He continued, ‘I thought I had a good 10-minute pace, I thought was pretty consistent and stuff, so yeh I think we are in the ballpark with everything.’ The leading non-European so far, the American said, ‘The car is comfortable but I wouldn’t mind getting more speed in the beginning but we do have that 3-minute warm-up for the the qualifiers so that is good. It just gives time for the tyre to warm-up, shocks, diffs, and that stuff.’ Planning some changes for the second seeding he said he wasn’t sure yet what those changes would be.
Giving his thoughts on his first seeding run, Canas said, ‘I think that as the best car we had so far. It is still a little bit difficult but the pace was pretty good over the 10-minutes. I know 4 or 5 guys have faster lap times but only one lap, that why I am third, but we will keep working on the car and make me more confident with it.’ Making a shock change this morning that ‘worked good’, he said it ‘made the car more easy but I want to have it a little more easy so I will work on that for the next one.’ On the quad, the Nitro Buggy World Championship Top Qualifier is still sticking with the safer option of triple single saying ‘I know the guys ahead of me I know they make the 4 but I think it is a risk for the qualifying.’
Reacting to his P4 in the first seeding, Ronnefalk said, ‘It was OK I would say, I kind of started doing the triple single in the beginning. I got three decent laps and I went over to try quad and had a couple of rough landings lets say like we all had. It’s not easy in that section especially when it gets as broken as it was in our heat or the last couple of heats that round.’ He continued, ‘It was very broken at the fourth jump there so it’s super dusty and even if you quad and nail the landing it’s super dusty and your car will push wide to the outside. I’m not really sure which one is the best one. I think triple single is obviously a little safer but in term of the car and everything it felt very good and the clean laps were fast.’
Asked about his run Iivonen said, ‘The actually felt better than in the last practice and I was super comfortable driving around the track. Only thing was that I went out with used tyres and the went completely bald at the end so I was maybe loosing a bit of grip but still I got the best laps at the end.’ For his second seeding effort the Finn will put on new tyres and just check over the car but is planning leave it the same as the first round.
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