Hara on a roll
Atsushi Hara appears to be on a roll now here in Thailand, taking TQ honours for the second of today’s three qualifiers. A strong breeze made for cooler than expected conditions and times tumbled at the RCS track with the Japanese ace knocking 3 seconds of his Round 1 TQ time and 15/100 off his best lap.
Making it two former World Champions at the top, Marc Rheinard produced his first 19 lap run and is far more upbeat about the handling of his Speed Passion powered Tamiya. Running old rubber for the round, the German will run a new set of the Sweep control tires in the last of today’s qualifiers and is confident he can take it to Hara saying after the run ‘now I can start’.
Ronald Volker was running second for much of the heat but made two ‘stupid’ mistakes. The German said he tried a little too hard to catch Hara resulting in two driver errors. Despite the time lost he still managed third for the round and although annoyed with himself he is very happy with the handling of his car.
A stripped spur ended a very competitive run in Heat 1 but Viktor Wilck finally got to show us his true ability at the controls of the Tamiya TRF416 World Edition by setting the fourth fastest time. The Swede said his car was not as good second time round pushing a little on the front but he was happy to finally get a decent run in. His Tamiya team-mate Jilles Groskamp was next up just 3/100th slower.
Having made radical set-up changes to his Xray after discussions with the cars designer Juraj Hudy, 15-year-old emerging British talent Elliot Harper put in a stunning run to record the six fastest time and believes that with some small fine tuning his T2 009 can go even quicker.
Hayato Matsuzaki and Andy Moore posted the 7th and 8th fastest time respectively for Hot Bodies while Shin Adachi made the full run time to record the 9th fastest time for Kyosho. Making it all four former World Champions in the top 10, Surikarn was tenth just ahead of Masami who made a mistake and rolled his Yokomo coming onto the back straight.
Top 10 results after Qualifying Rd2
1. Atsushi Hara (HB) – 19 Lap 5:12.755
2. Marc Rheinard (Tamiya) – 19 Lap 5:15.286
3. Ronald Volker (HB) – 19 Lap 5:15.608
4. Viktor Wilck (Tamiya) – 19 Lap 5:16.050
5. Jilles Groskamp (Tamiya) – 19 Lap 5:16.088
6. Elliot Harper (Xay) – 19 Lap 5:16.302
7. Hayato Matsuzaki (HB) – 19 Lap 5:16.686
8. Andy Moore (HB) – 19 Lap 5:16.707
9. Shin Adachi (Kyosho) – 18 Lap 5:00.694
10. Surikarn C. (HB) – 18 Lap 5:00.860
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