Zalewski top seed in Czech Republic
Xray’s Bartek Zalewski continues to set the pace at MIBO International, the defending 2WD Champion topping Saturday morning’s seeding practice in both 2WD and 4WD. The Polish driver set the pace in yesterday’s free practice with the Schumacher of compatriot Michal Orlowski his closest challenger after the 5-round and it was a repeat of that over the 2 seeding rounds today. In 2WD, Zalewski had almost 3/10ths of a second advantage over Orlowski with European Champion Martin Bayer completing the Top 3 ahead of Czech racer Dominik Vlasek, Schumacher’s Daniel Kobbevik and Sworkz’s Micha Vidmaier. In 4WD Orlowski was only 4/100ths off, with last year’s runner-up Kobbevik completing the Top 3 despite failing to improve on his SP1 time. British Schumacher team driver Ben Smith seeds fourth ahead of Bayer with Vidmaier again completing the Top 6.
‘The pace is still good, both cars are working really good’, was Zalewski reaction after the completion of seeding. The 19-year-old continued, ‘the cars are easy to drive and fast, so it’s all really good right now.’ Asked about the track layout in terms of difficulty in running an error free 5-minute qualifier, the double winner of the MKGP in the UK earlier this month, replied, ‘It’s not extremely difficult to make a clean 5-minutes on this track, so I hope it will be all good for qualifying.’
Orlowski summed up seeding with, ‘It was OK’. The previous MIBO International Touring Car Champion continued, ‘we just made small changes each run. The track is quite high grip. It’s fresh carpet and the temperature is quite nice here so the grip is pretty high and we are trying to make the car easy but then there is a lot of twisty turns we need the steering for. So we just making small changes from the set-up we have been running all Winter.’ Feeling both his cars are running equally good, he said, ‘Bartek is faster on 3-laps but with both cars I am able to do clean runs so we will see if that is enough for qualifying.’
Summing up seeding, Kobbevik said, ‘It was quite consistent but not I’m not at the pace of Michal and Bartek yet. I trying to figure some stuff out which is not too far away but hopefully I can find this small adjustments that make it a bit easier & faster.’ Asked what he felt he was lacking in his buggies, the World Championship finalist explained, ‘right now it pace and also the confidence going around the track. The track is quite open and not too difficult. Last year it was a lot of 180s, the tabletop was difficult, now it has a lot of flow and speed. So looking at the track you would think its easy but you need to go so quick and the first mistake its a complete disaster and from the middle of the track you can end up on the back straight.’ On which buggy he is more comfortable with, the Norwegian said, ‘maybe the are the same but the 4WD is I feel like a bit faster so that’s nice. The 2-wheel I am doing some drastic changes every run and sometimes they are good and sometimes bad.’
