Rheinard top seed at 1:12 Worlds

Current 1:12 World Champion Marc Rheinard is the top seed at the 21st running of IFMAR’s original electric category.  The Awesomatix driver set the fastest 3-consecutive laps in the second of the 3 seeding rounds today at Beachline Raceway in Florida.  Having won the first of his two Worlds titles in Florida nine years ago, the multiple Electric Touring Car Champion will lead away tomorrow’s opening qualifier ahead of Schumacher pairing Ollie Payne and Michal Orlowski.  Payne was just 0.053 off the pace of Rheinard, the British driver’s best time also coming in the second controlled practice.  With Rheinard fastest in the opening two rounds, Orlowski would top the third & final practice breaking into the 32-seconds for the first time, with the Top 3 separated by just 8/100ths of a second.  Leading the home challenge Sam Isaacs made a significant improvement in CP3 to end to up 4th ahead of fellow American and Awesomatix team-mate Kemp Anderson.  Completing the Top 6, Germany’s Jan Ratheisky was the highest placed Xray.

Not reading too much into his top seed status going into qualifying tomorrow, Rheinard was more concerned about his tyres prep saying, ‘I need to figure out the gluing of my front tyres’.  Showing an example of his own tyre gluing and a set done for him by team-mate Anderson the German needs to master his gluing skills so as to just have the glue on the tyres very narrow side wall.  On his final seeding run, he said, ‘It was slower and I didn’t have good steering at the end’.  Asked about tomorrow opening day of qualifying, 3 of the 6 rounds making up the schedule, Rheinard believes, ‘the Schumacher guys are a bit ahead of me’.  He added, ‘8-minutes is long but I think myself and Orlowski are able to keep it clean while the others seem to crash more’.

Despite a rear tyre issue in CP3 when ‘the whole outside peeled off’, Payne was bullish about his car’s performance going into qualifying saying ‘it should be really good’ over the 8-minutes.  Winner of both the recent 1:12 International Grand Prix in Italy and Masters of Foam in Belgium, he said while his car is maybe not the fastest it is really strong for 8-minutes.  ‘I think me, Marc and Michal are all going to be very close and Kemp is fast too if he can stop doing kamikaze at the chicane’.

Pleased to top the final practice, Orlowski said, ‘that was a nice confidence boost to end practice with.  We tried some stuff and the car is perfect now.  The balance is good for the first time’.  Describing CP3 as a nice 8-minute run, he was over 3-seconds quicker than Rheinard, the pair were the only drivers to run 43-laps.  Orlowski did air slight caution about his car saying they might need to chance the chassis after it took a number of big impacts earlier in the day and should a change be required it is not always a given the car will performance the same.

‘That last run was definitely better’ was how Isaacs summed up the final seeding round.  Fresh from retaining his U.S. Indoor Champs title, he said he tried to ‘smooth the car out’ but ending up with a car that was ‘pushing instead’.  Confident the changes he made were still a step in the right direction but hoping for better tomorrow, he admitted ‘the cars are hard to drive and hard to go 8-minutes without crashing’.  He concluded, ‘there is plenty ways to go still’.

After a good start to controlled practice, setting the 3rd fastest time, the rest of the day was to be challenging for Anderson.  Unable to beat his opening time, his second run ended with a big off at the chicane that meant a new bodyshell for CP3.  Having checked over his Awesomatix he said he must have missed something as the car felt tweaked and he would now fit new parts for tomorrow.  Son of new IFMAR president and accomplished racer Eric Anderson, asked how he felt his car was running before the crash, he said, ‘at the beginning of the run it was good and I was happy with the car so we have good set-up to work off tomorrow’.

In addition to the established Modified World title, 1:12 will crown its second ever Spec Class Champion here in Cocoa, Florida.  After controlled practice it is British racer Morgan Williams with his Schumacher Eclipse 5 who is the top seed.  Running a best time of 37.185 in the third round compared to the top Modified pace of 32.916, Williams was fastest from the Xray of America’s Robbie Dodge with Awesomatix’s Max Machler from Germany completing the Top 3.

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