Bernadzik tops first seeding in Indonesia

Alex Bernadzik topped the opening round of seeding at the season finale of the Asian Buggy Championships today in Indonesia, the Australian heading a 1-2 for Team Associated.  Over the 41-seconds West Side Raceway lap, he would have a 4/10ths of a second advantage over team-mate Hyunkyu Jung as each drivers best two consecutive laps were recorded.  A more technical track layout than the Championships’ previous 2024 visit to the dirt track, traffic seemed to be the biggest challenge for drivers in the randomly created seeding groups.  Completing the Top 3 for the first of the two seeding rounds, the second getting Friday’s action underway here in Jakarta, was Mayako’s Pekko Iivonen who was 7/10ths off Bernadzik’s pace.  The Sparko of Jayden Edmunds was next up, the Australia fourth fastest ahead of the Infinity of Jason Nugroho, one of the few drivers not to sauce his tyres, and the Sworkz of fellow Indonesian Adrian Wicaksono.

‘Nitro was definitely good’, was Bernadzik’s response when asked about the first seeding run.  The former Asian Buggy Championships Australia race winner added, ‘My car is really good but still lacking a little bit in mid corner but it was super easy to drive.’  His first time to Indonesia, he continued, ‘I had one mistake but that was just tangling with another car.  The actual run itself was pretty good and I don’t think I made one mistake myself.’  Still running on Hotrace’s Super Soft Sahara tyre in the dusty track conditions, asked about set-up changes for tomorrow, he replied, ‘I am just going to work on my eBuggy because Nitro is fine.  It’s more so tyres and just making sure they are right’.

Asked how he felt the first counting run of the weekend went, Jung said, ‘It wasn’t bad’.  The 16-year-old Korean continued, ‘we ran the same car (set-up) and just tried a different tyre compound.  The tyre is so important here with everyone saucing and doing something on the inserts.  I think I went out with too soft a compound for the conditions then but for tomorrow I think we need to try some other things with our tyre prep.’

Fastest in the first eBuggy seeding run Iivonen summed up his nitro effort with, ‘It was OK, I was in a slower group and there was some drivers who tried to be faster than me so I had some slight problems getting two good laps but my pace wasn’t too bad.’  The new slimmed down Finn, who just recently ran & completed his first half marathon, continued, ‘the car was slighted too soft I would say so I think compared to eBuggy, I was running the same shocks in both, I think I will go stiffer with the nitro for tomorrow.  It was actually rotating a bit better than the eBuggy and that was good but I just need some more stability in my opinion and once I get that it will be quite good.’