3 from 3 as Isaacs continues to rule Touring Car qualifying at NYGP
Awesomatix’s Sam Isaacs continues to set the Touring Car pace at the MonTech New York Grand Prix, the defending champion making it 3 from 3 as he set a new TQ pace in the third round of qualifying. Improving his overnight TQ pace of the Gravity RC Modified Touring Car class by 2-seconds, Isaacs led an Awesomatix 1-2 in the penultimate qualifier with team-mate Kemp Anderson having his best run 1.5-seconds back. Having held P2 at the end of Friday’s qualifying action, Xray’s Keven Hebert set the third fastest time for the round ahead of team-mate Bryce Frechette with Xray’s US team manager Drew Ellis completing the Top 5.
On taking his 3rd TQ run of the event, Isaacs said, ‘That was a pretty good run, the car had good speed but was a little hard to drive so I made a couple of errors.’ He added, ‘I’ll try to make it a little easier to drive the last qualifier and clean up my driving hopefully.’ Asked if he could maintain his advantage over his rivals for the final qualifier and lock up the TQ honours for tomorrow’s final, he said, ‘Yeah maybe but it’s hard to say. The track is getting a little bit better, it’s a tenth faster than it was yesterday so with rocket round anything can happen and there are a lot of fast guys here so we still got to try keep pushing I think.’
We made a pretty big improvement for the last run, finding almost 4-seconds over the run, he explained, ‘we made a few changes and it felt pretty good.’ Asked what he found that was lacking yesterdays, the 24-year-0ld said, ‘just overall we found a better balance in the car. It has been a little understeery all week. We found some steering today although it did get a little pushy at the end of that run but we’ll make one small change for the last one and see how it is.’
The 2024 Mod Touring Car winner in New Rochelle, Hebert was pleased with his own performance in Q3 but less so with his car’s. The Canadian said, ‘I drove really good, I just didn’t have the pace. I drove a perfect race and was 2-seconds back, I just need more steering & more pace but I am running out of ideas.’ He added, ‘We’ll try something for the last qualifier but it is going to be difficult to challenge for the front but we’ll give it everything.’ Asked when driving the car if it felt it was missing something, he said, ‘It’s in the car because I drove a perfect race, I ran a 99.5% so I don’t think I can drive much better with the car I have right now. All I have to do is find a little more pace and I think the driving is there. I need to get the car to finish the corner better.’