Catanzani from Ripoll in early 1:8 Worlds seeding

Having taken the overall TQ at the 1:8 GT World Championship in Chile back in September, it is Serpent’s Andrea Catanzani who leads the way in early seeding at the IFMAR 1:8 Onroad World Championship from Maxime Ripoll, the French Xray driver impressing onlookers with his speed here at the large Club de Aeromodelos de Chile track in Santiago.  With Catanzani the benchmark in free practice, the Italian carried that momentum into the first of the four seeding rounds with a best time of 55.443 over 3-laps with Mugen Seiki’s Simon Kurzbuch his closest rival with a 55.459 as team-mate Shoki Takahata complete the Top 3 ahead of Ripoll.  With changing track conditions the biggest challenge for drivers, as things hotted up after the first seeding on a cool track, it was Ripoll who had everything perfect to go fastest with a 55.499 just ahead of Takahata.  Making a changed that didn’t do what he expected, Catanzani was 3rd fastest ahead of the Kyosho of top British racer Alex Thurston.  One of the pre-race favourites coming into the 44th running of these championships off the back of a championship winning ENS season, it has been a tough morning for Capricorn’s Toni Gruber,  the German experiencing engine issues in both runs.  While the car runs fine in the warm-up out on track it loses power and when they pit they find the plug is bad leading them to believe, having had the same problem twice, that a bad batch of glow plugs is the issue.  The 2023 1:8 GT World Champion will be hoping plugs from another batch will give him a change to seed strongly over the final two practices round for tomorrow’s start of qualifying, each driver’s best two points finishes from the four rounds determining the order for the heats.

Summing up his morning Catanzani said, ‘The first one was good.  The second one we tried something different because we know the track is always changing condition but it didn’t work like we expected so we just finish the practice and got third.’  He continued, ‘We know what we have to do for the next one.’  On his pace since practice started for the event on Friday, he replied, ‘the car is really good, especially in the morning, there is no wind and the track is still cold but then in the afternoon the wind starts so the car is a little bit sliding in the rear and also because the track gets more hot.  We are still finding the good set-up for this.’  The only leading contender to have previously raced here, asked if his GT experience was an advantage, he replied, ‘Only maybe for the first day because when the fastest guys arrive on track they need less than 1-day to learn the track.’  Ask about the technicality of the track for 1:8 Onroad, the 1:8 GT drivers loving the layout and size, Catalan said, ‘It’s not simple because there is also bumps you beed to avoid so it’s technical and fast.  If you stay near the white markings you are fast but if you go too much and hit them you loose time, it is a fine line.’

Racing 1:8 Onroad competitively since 2017, Chile is Ripoll’s 3rd World Championships.  With Fontana in 2019 very much a learning process, 2-years ago in Japan he looked on target to bump up to the Semi Finals until a tyre problem put him out of contention.  With a European Championship podium finish to his credit, the 19-year-old is now making a strong impression in Santiago.  A 2-time French National Champion, he said his car has been working well and unlike his rivals doesn’t seem to be as affected as much by the day’s changing track conditions.  He explained, ‘we came here with a base set up and just made some little adjustments like the shock oils and springs, the flex on the radio plate, and the roll centre, but really small changes.  For me the car is good all the time.  We change nothing compared to this morning.’  The Max Power driver added, ‘We won’t change the car for the next one but we might change engine just to test and to preserve the best one.  I already have two good engines ready to go.’  Asked about the track, Ripoll said, ‘It is super big, super fast, and while I like it I prefer a little track and a more technical track. For me this one is easy, maybe too easy for a World Championship.’

Giving a run down in the first half of seeding, Kurzbuch said, ‘It could be better.  In the morning run we had a bit of understeer in the car but the rest was good.  For Round 2 we changed to another engine just to try everything but the setting was too rich and I could only do my fast laps at the end with the engine still too rich so we could not be competitive that one’.  Overall the 2015 World Champion said their program is going good and they have learned a lot and ‘what we have seen so far is like in almost every heat someone else is the fastest, someone gets everything right for the conditions and set-up.  I think that is the difficult part for qualifying to try to get every run everything perfect.’  On the changing conditions, the Swiss driver explained, ‘First of all the first run is cold and no wind, the second run is no wind and hot, and then we start with a little wind and hot, and then we have hot and a lot of wind, that’s the daily programme.’  On the layout he described it as ‘fun to drive, it’s perfect, it’s a good track.’

Team-mate Takahata felt the balance of his MRX7 was better in the second round due the track conditions having not made any set-up changes.  Happy with how his car has been running since arriving here for practice, the 2019 World Champion is however not a huge fan of the track finding it completely alien in terms of size compared to the much smaller tracks he races on in Japan.  Taking his World title win in the US, he said the CACH track is bigger than the now no longer existing Steel City RC Speedway in Fontana.  On car set-up he said he doesn’t plan to change anything highlight that with the track so different each run it is hard to know if the change worked or it was the track.  Overall he the  happy with his pace describing the new car, with which he just recently won the Japanese National title, as ‘very good’. Making the switch from long time engine sponsors O.S to reigning World Champions Max Power this season, he said he the Italian engines are ‘super strong here.