Orlowski to lead out Q1 at Worlds

Schumacher’s Michal Orlowski will lead out the opening round of qualifying at the Electric Touring Car World Championships, the Polish driver setting the fastest 5-minute run time in CP3 as official Top Seed Bruno Coelho traction rolled meaning the Xray driver will roll out 5th in Q1.  Having set the pace based on 3-consecutive laps in the day’s opening seeding round, Coelho repeated the feat in CP2 to secure the No.1 race number for his car for qualifying ahead of Orlowski, Alexander Hagberg and Marc Rheinard.  While Coelho again proved he had the fastest outright pace in CP3, it was now the full 5-minutes that determined the starting order for the first of the six qualifying rounds. Orlowski would end up setting that pace 3.5-seconds up on Rheinard with an impressive performance from Orlowski’s Italian team-mate Mattia Collina securing him third ahead of the Mugen Seiki of former World Champion Ronald Volker.

Summing up his CP3 topping effort, Orlowski said, ‘It was a good practice and I am feeling good for qualifying as I always had clean runs but on pace it is very close with Bruno as always.  I am sure they are changing their car for Q1 but we tried a few different approaches in the practice today and we just need to make the decision to pick the best one for Q1.  It’s feeling good because we are always fast and 5-minute pace is good and Mattia now is super strong.’  Asked about traffic in qualifying given the short lap, the reigning 1:12 World Champion said, ‘we saw now that it’s actually not such a big problem, I caught 2 or 3 cars starting from second.  For sure there will be traffic but its the same for everyone and that other drivers will open when caught.’  While the finals will feature 10-cars, the qualifiers have been capped at 9 cars.

Asked about starting second for the first qualifier, Rheinard said, ‘Because Bruno is on P5 and fastest I hope he will not catch up to me quickly.  I made some changes (for CP3) and it didn’t work so I will go back to what I had before and just try to get around but I am struggling in the right turns, the car gets loose and not good feeling.  The rest of the track is fine its is just those two corners I struggling.’

‘Now the car is amazing’ was Collina’s reaction after CP3.  He continued, ‘We change always little things for try to open the window relating to the temperature and for the moment we are on the correct way’.  Asked if he and Orlowski run the same set-ups he said, ‘we are very similar, my car is more safe to drive but quite the same’.  Very happy to be starting out from 3rd position asked how he felt he replied, ‘In my opinion we have a very good car for the 5-minutes.’

‘It was again the same, I traction rolled so we need to fix this problem if we want to fight for the win.’ was Coelho’s response when asked about the final seeding round.  The reigning World Champion continued, ‘For the moment I think I am the fastest out there for a single lap but not really for the 5-minutes so we need to fix that.  We still have too much traction especially middle end, too much traction on the car which makes it very easy to flip then.  We need to find something that makes it easy for me to touch the curbs without the problem of flipping.’

In seeding for the Spec class, the day belonged to European Champion Simon Lauter.  The German secured the No.1 sticker for qualifying for his Awesomatix and in CP3 topped the 5-minutes by 1.8-second from US racer and IFMAR President Eric Anderson who was seeded P6.   Former European Champion and Awesomatix team-manager Max Machler made it a trio of the manufacturers A800R that will roll out Q1.  Official P2 in seeding, Xray’s Shin Sawada managed only 2-laps in CP3 and will line-up 9th and last for Q1.

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Coelho tops opening seeding round in Bakersfield

As things start to get official here at the IFMAR ISTC World Championships in Bakersfield, California, it was Bruno Coelho who set the pace in the first of the 3 seeding rounds, the reigning World Champion’s closest challenger continuing to be Michal Orlowski.  With yesterday’s wind having died down and the morning sun bringing some extra temperature, drivers posted their fastest laps of the event so far around the Finishline RC Raceway with Coelho’s advantage over 3-consecutive laps 1/10th of a second on Orlowski.  Behind them it was Warm-up Race winner Akio Sobue who was 3rd fastest ahead of Marc Rheinard with Infinity’s Jin Sawada and Schumacher’s Mattia Collina completing the Top 6.

A run that contained a number of mistakes, Coelho summed SP1 with, ‘It was OK, I was fast but not really consistent.’  The Xray driver explained, ‘I traction rolled two times, the traction is pretty high now so we need to find something on the car to avoid the flip.’  Asked about the evolving track conditions, he said, ‘It is not windy so the track is more clean so I would say now it is 100% what we were at at the Warm-up’.

Reacting to his run Orlowski said, ‘It was good, the 5-minute pace is good, the car is nice, not perfect, but the conditions keep changing but now it’s more to what we know.’  The Schumacher driver added, ‘We have two more chances to make some adjustments.  I am confident with the 3-laps I have done so we can experiment a bit.  Mattia (Collina) went really fast now so we have two good working cars and we can test a few things on both cars.  He ran something I didn’t have on my car which I might try for the next one.’  On his rival, the Polish driver said, ‘Bruno is quick on 3-laps, he has good pace but keeps making mistakes but I am sure they are going to get the car easy to drive.  We just need to take advantage of the last two practices and find the best 5-minute pace possible.’

Axon’s Sobue was pleased with how the track is today but openly admitted there is a gap to the two ahead of him.  The Japanese drivers said, ‘Finally we are back to the conditions we know but Michal and Bruno after a few minutes have a very strong pace.  I think for 5-minutes I need better management of my tyres and to improve my driving to be with them.’

Reacting to his P4 pace, Rheinard described his opening seeding effort as, ‘Not that good’, adding, ‘I think my tyre prep was wrong.’  He explained, ‘Saucing the tyres twice I think makes it too stuck so the car wasn’t free anymore.  We will change this and maybe one or two car changes and see how it goes.  Right now the pace is not where I want to be.’  Asked about track conditions the 3-time ISTC World Champion said, ‘Luckily, the sun helped a lot.’

In the Spec Class, it was 2024 TITC Open Brushless Champion Simon Lauter who set the pace ahead of Xray pairing Jan Ratheisky and Stefan Schulz.  With a new Champion of the class set to be crowned this week with inaugural champion Alexandre Duchet not travelling to the US, asked about his practice so far Awesomatix’s Lauter said, ‘Overall I am super happy with everything, we expected difficult conditions like or not used to compared to the warm-up and the testing we did and for sure that’s what happened.  I think grip was even lower than ever when we were practicing here but now today it’s quite high guessing the right amount of traction that the track will get is most important for now because set-up choices can depend on how much grip has to have so as not to flip or snap oversteer, but for now we are quite happy & quite confident.’  On his rivals he said, ‘Jan is super strong and I expect some other guys to come up even more who you don’t see on the timing right now for example Ollie Payne and Shin Sawada as they were super strong at the Warm-up.’  Planning to test only little stuff for his next run, the German driver explained, ‘I just want to drive clean and not smash the car, one big thing is the rule of only one marked chassis, because it you smash it or bend it you are kind of f**ked to be honest.  I think I am very close the where I need to be, Jan and myself didn’t do 5-minute runs because we saved some tyres but I think it should be good on 5-minutes based on yesterday.’

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Coelho from Orlowski as free practice concludes at WC

Day 1 of the action at the IFMAR Touring Car World Championship in California has concluded with Bruno Coelho setting the pace from arch rival Michal Orlowski.  With 5-rounds of free practice making up the day’s action it was Coelho’s Xray that would set the fastest time in all but 1 round, the Schumacher of Orlowski the only other driver to top the time sheets when he set the fastest 3-consecutive laps in FP4 by just 0.009 of a second from Coelho.  With FP5 proving the fastest run of the day, it would be Marc Rheinard’s Awesomatix that would end up third quickest for the day ahead of Alexander Hagberg’s Xray with Axon’s Akio Sobue and Mugen Seiki’s Ronald Volker completing the Top 6 times on a windy day at the Finishline RC Raceway track.

‘It was a good day I would say’ was how back to back reigning World Champion Coelho summed Wednesday opening day of track action.  He continued, ‘Things are getting faster & faster and as we expected the traction is going up.  The cars are starting to be difficult to drive and you can see many people flip and making many mistakes.  We are getting closer to what we had here on our (pre race) practice so from now on it is all about small tenths every lap like trying to gain 0.001 every lap to be in the front at the end of 5-minutes and try not to do any mistakes’.  On the state of the traction at the end of the day, he said, ‘we are now doing very similar lap times to when we were here for testing so I would say I don’t really feel it is less grip but it feels just strange, it is different.  The cars are working in a different way but in the end they are doing the exactly the same as they did at the warm-up which was losing the rear the in the middle of the corner and through the round you go the more it happens.’  Asked if he would sum up the first day of the Worlds as Day as solid day, he said, ‘I would not say a solid-solid day but a very good one, a very good start I would say’.

Orlowski described his day as, ‘pretty good’, adding, ‘it seems like we found our way back to where we wanted to be because we got a little bit lost and towards the end it was very strong pace in FP4 & FP5.’  The reigning 1:12 World Champion who is chasing his first title in Touring Car after a very strong 2024 season continued, ‘Bruno is fast as well but he hasn’t done a full 5-minute run yet so I am feeling good for tomorrow.  We made wrong change for the last one so we will go back for tomorrow.  We just need to stay on top of things depending how the track changes, conditions today were quite windy and cold but we expect it to be less windy throughout the week and a little warmer, probably the grip will be coming up with more cars driving on it.  Less dust and more grip, that is where our car is the best.’

Touring Car’s more decorated World Champion, Rheinard felt he ended the day ‘not far off’ adding ‘but my driving is not great yet, I think I can still improve there.’  Asked in what way the reigning European Champion said, ‘my consistency, to try to stay longer on throttle sometimes and I am overshooting a lot so I am not happy with my driving but the car is getting better.  I think we still need to find something but so far so good.’  On the track conditions, he said, ‘From Run 1 to now the track improved for sure but let’s see how it goes for tomorrow when it is going to be cold again.  We don’t know if the traction is going to come up again quickly or if it will be like this morning, I don’t know.  Hopefully it is going to be traction right away.’

Asked how he was feeling at the end of the first day of action Hagberg replied, ‘Good, I think I have been in the mix all day, at least in the Top 5 pretty much all day.’  The Swede continued, ‘We are still working on the set-up and fine tuning it to find a bit more pace and try to move up into the Top 3 maybe.  It will be interesting to see the pace over a 5-minute run instead of just 3-laps.  I am fairly happy but I think there is more potential to unlock for tomorrow.  Asked where he felt he could improve, the former 1:12 World Champion said, ‘we are trying to find balance between rear traction and front end grip and to fine tune the roll centre, small changes to find the best balance with the car.  I think we are close and just need to work on the details.’

Winner of September’s official ISTC World Championship Warm-up race ahead of Hagberg, Sobue was another who felt his car was good but there was room for better from the driver.  The Japanese former podium finisher said, ‘Overall my day was good but I need to improve my driving more and work on better lines.  On a good run it is good but sometimes I go off line and it is super dusty so I need to tidy this up.’  Asked about his prototype Axon, he said, ‘This car is really good and the pace is good.’  Making ‘just small changes’ each round he admitted they resulted in ‘not so big differences’ but he feels the biggest gains for tomorrow are to come from his driving and a hopeful dying down of today’s wind.

Volker summed up free practice with, ‘It was a very intense day running two cars all the time to get more data.’  The former World Champion continued, ‘I had some rough runs but also some very good ones but overall I am very happy to be out there with the new car and I think we are going in the right direction.’  Ending up P6, he said that time was perfect explaining, ‘In the last one when the track was at its best I didn’t have three good laps in a row but otherwise I feel pretty confident.’  Asked if he felt he was in the mix he replied, ‘Actually I am not sure about this because I didn’t check so much results today as I was focused on my own car getting the feeling for it but at least I feel there is a high chance to be competitive.  The track was very tricky today with the wind so I think this was the lowest grip we will have for the week and the track should grip up day by day, I feel we are competitive with our new package’.

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