Canas holds overnight Worlds TQ

Day 1 of qualifying at the IFMAR 1:8 Offroad World Championship is complete and it is Pre Race favourite Juan Carlos Canas who holds the overnight TQ in Spain.  The Sworkz driver made it 2 out of 3 when he backed up his Q2 TQ performance in the final run of the day, however it wasn’t a perfect Q3 from the Spaniard.  In the end however he took another max points haul ahead of World Champion Davide Ongaro.  Opening qualifying with a TQ run, Ongaro’s Team Associated holds P2 overall with Bruno Coelho with a pair of Top 3 times from Q1 & 2 sitting 3rd.  It wasn’t a good Q3 for the former 1:10 Offroad World Champion, a number of errors after a wrong tyre choice leaving him with the 6th fastest time.  Instead the Top 3 for the round was completed by Dakotah Phend, the TLR driver continuing his rise to the front as the top US contender sitting fifth overall behind 2016 World Champion David Ronnefalk.

Summing up his second TQ run, Canas said, ‘I make a mistake, I put on new tyre and at the beginning it was a little loose and I pushed too hard and I have my mistake, it was my mistake.’  The 22-year-old said after the mistake, while helped by the tyres coming in, ‘my mental approach also changed so I am happy about that but not happy with run as not a clean run. I am happy about the speed I show after the mistake’. Living a 4,5 hour drive from the track asked about the second day of qualifying, the final 3 rounds on the schedule, he replied, ‘Tomorrow is one new day, anything can happen.  It will be a colder track because we have less temperature so we will see what happens but my plan is clean runs and be confident for long runs’.

Over a second off Canas, Ongaro said, ‘That was more windy I think.  I had a really bad stop lap because they made a mistake catching my car and on the back section, the two doubles, wind catch my car and I fly on the double.  I had a 57 (seconds) lap which cost me a lot because we normally have a 54 on the fuel stop lap.  Anyway I am happy in the P2 for the third round because we are still the fight for TQ.  If not no problem, the race is on Saturday, so I don’t care really.’  Asked more about the wind and whether he felt he could do anything with his car for it, the 23-year-old said, ‘If it is a problem then yes we need to look but think it will not be the same in the morning because the wind always come on the last round like yesterday.  So we see tomorrow, without the wind my car is good so all good otherwise.’

Packing up after a very positive day, a very happy Phend said, ‘That went great, probably my cleanest run so far, just really concentrated on hitting the marks every lap and being super consistent and we found a little bit of speed that time as well so we are closing the gap.  Probably still half a second or so on the speed but the consistency feels good and car feels comfortable at the speed I am doing right now.’  Asked what he changed to find the speed he explained, ‘we changed the front springs, different camber links and different shock, lot of little changes now and we’re getting closer and closer. For Day 1 I’m pretty happy how it went we got better every run and all three rounds were really solid driving, Donal is awesome in the pits.’

Laughing at getting another 4th for the round, Top Seed Ronnefalk said, ‘but this time I had really good speed, the changes we made from Q2 to Q3 improved and the tyres worked well from the start of the run that time.  I felt really good, unfortunately I touched the pipe at the bottom left chicane, the fast one, and the car just went on flying out into the fence and that was 4-5 seconds lost.’  With Bryan Baldo crashing in front of him he lost further time, ‘he crashed right in front of me with three laps to go, he was going to let me by, he was going to go wide but he just rolled at the bottom left.  That was unfortunate, it was not his fault, but I was just at the wrong spot and the wrong time so I lost anther 3-seconds or so.  All that considered I still made it over for a 13-lap run.  I know it could have been a lot better and the 6-seconds or so cost be a shot at the TQ.  Anyway it feels good now ’cause I was kind of lacking the speed in the first two and it feels like I got the speed I had yesterday back.’  Asked if he had any issues with the wind, he said he did notice it in the warm-up but in the run he did not have any problems.

Having opened with a strong P5 showing in the opening qualifier but suffering a rough Q2 Tekno’s Joao Figueiredo managed to round off the day with a second Top 5 run.  Explaining his Q2 effort, the Portuguese driver said, ‘we made a small change and we figure out we probably had the car too stiff overall.’  Going back to a softer set-up for the last one and making some adjustments on his tyre inserts, and ‘it paid off, the car is pretty good now it is just missing a little speed.’  Asked if he knew where he was loosing that speed he said, ‘We are probably going to play around with the clutch because I think it is not on point.  It feels smooth and everything but I did some laps behind some guys and they are pulling 1-2 out of the corners.  We just need one more Top 5 and think when that averages out we will be good.’

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One a piece as Canas takes Q2

It is one a piece for the World Champion and European Champion in qualifying at the IFMAR 1:8 Offroad World Championship, the later, Juan Carlos Canas taking the second round of qualifying ahead of Round 1 TQ winner Davide Ongaro.  Posting a new fastest time, Canas’ Sworkz would stop the clock 3/10ths up on the World Champions Team Associated as Xray pairing Bruno Coelho and David Ronnefalk joined them on 13-laps runs.  While it has been the European drivers leading the way at RC Redovan, TLR’s Dakotah Phend continued to close the gap, the American posting a P5 for the round.

It was a clean run but I had traffic again’ was Canas’ reaction to topping Q2.  Asked how much the traffic affected his time, the Spaniard said, ‘I don’t know but maybe 1-second or more.’  With some drivers reporting the track feeling different given timing in the day, the pre-race favourite said, ‘I didn’t change my car and I feel the same grip on everything.’  Pleased with how his car and taking the approach “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” he said he plans to finish out Day 1 of qualifying with an unchanged set-up.

Ongaro was happy with his car but less pleased with his driving saying, ‘I had two stupid mistakes by myself, I crashed outside the pit lane and hit the wall and on the same lap on the chicane in the middle of the lap I lost half a second’.  The Italian continued, ‘Overall I am happy, I am super confident with car and can drive easy on 48 (second) pace.’  With three from 6 rounds to count, he plans to finish out the day with the same car and with a good result then use tomorrow to try some changes and ‘find our limits’.

Describing his run as ‘very clean’, Coelho continued, ‘towards the end I felt the car was a bit soft.  I don’t know if it was the tyres but now it is pretty hot so the tyre probably got too soft.  I also have high tyre wear now so we think they were not the perfect compound for now.  For the last 2-minutes the car was difficult to drive’.  He continued, ‘it should be colder, for sure we are going to try different things but I think the track is coming where it will completely change the compound of the tyres.  From now on I think the game of the tyres starts.  The track is getting oily now, you can see people using clays now and starting to get faster. Our set-up is there and it is all about tyres now.’

‘Another decent run I would say’, was how Ronnefalk summed up Round 2.  He explained, ‘I told the guys coming into today three rounds in the Top 4 I would be happy then I had a mistake on the pit lane in the first round and then this time I was super careful coming and going out but I still messed it up.  The pitstop itself was fast so I can’t blame pit guys but I lost 2-seconds on that pit lane, I got stuck on the tube on the exit.  That’s free time you can’t afford to give away if you want to TQ.  Obviously it won’t have been enough to challenge for the TQ but I would have been within 2-seconds again.  Another Top 4 this round is still a good score I would say’.  For Q3 the Swede ‘will try some stuff’ feeling with four rounds left he should be able to get one more strong run to lock himself into the Semis.

Upbeat about his latest performance, Phend said, ‘That was a solid, really clean run, didn’t have a bobble, we are in the ball park where we need to be car wise.  We are just kind of fine tuning and tinkering trying to find more speed.  I feel like I am driving pretty safe out there so when I know I can get more comfortable and I can hopefully push the pace more.  We are just going to keep working on the car and get a third round in and then tomorrow then we can really start to throw stuff at the car and see what we come up with.  Asked if he had been on the back foot in practice, the 2022 12th place finisher said, ‘Yesterday was a little bit of a rough day, we made a lot of progress the first two practice days but went backwards yesterday in seeding but glad to turn it around so far today so we’ll try to keep in rolling and aim to get in Semi and go from there’.

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Ronnefalk is Top Seed at Offroad Worlds

Coming into the IFMAR 1:8 Offroad World Championship in Spain with some new found confidence, Xray’s David Ronnefalk has further boosted his form for the most important bi-annual racing week of the year by claiming the Top Seed honours for the start of qualifying tomorrow.  Fastest in first seeding practice from reigning Champion David Ongaro, the former World Champion went quickest again in the second round motivated by the hard charging back to back reigning European Champion Juan Carlos Canas.  Over the counting 3-consecutive laps only 0.038 of seconds separated them.  Third fastest for the round, that is where Ongaro finds himself seeded for quali in front of Boots, the British driver struggling with the increased grip and only managed 7th fastest time time for the round.  Fourth fastest in the second run of the day, Tekno’s Joao Figueiredo is the 5th seed, one spot ahead of fellow countryman Bruno Coelho, the Xray driver having to pit during the evening run after a rear tyre parted way from the rim.

Reacting to his 8/10ths of a second improvement, Ronnefalk explained, ‘we made a couple of changes to the car for that one as I had a good car in the first one.  Also I broke in a new drivetrain to put that one aside for later in the race just to keep everything fresh towards the end. The grip was up, we saw the track was faster the heat before so I knew that it was going to be a quicker run so I had to put everything together took a couple of laps for the driver to break in.  I also had the idle set too low before going out on the track,  it died there on me once, bumped it back up and after that it was really good to the end’.  On tomorrows qualifying, Ronnefalk said, ‘It should be all good, feeling confident, car is easy to drive . Everything we’ve been trying is good, I have always been in the Top 3-5 let’s say and it seems like we are on a really good track here so hopefully we can keep it going tomorrow in qualifying.’

With the potential to give the host nation a home winner, Canas was much happier with his Sworkz second time round.  He explained, ‘I changed things on the car and the tyre compound and I didn’t like it but for the last one I tried new things and it works really really good.  Asked about tomorrow’s first day of qualifying, 3 of the sixth rounds on the schedule, the Spaniard said , ‘yeh, yeh I feel confident cause I not only made three good laps also the 10-minutes was under 50 (seconds).  It’s a really good car to drive.  Asked about further changes ahead of Q1 he replied, ‘maybe we try to make it a little safer for the 10-minute run nothing more’.

Checking in with Ongaro about his evening run, the Italian was running in Heat 14 of 15 for seeding, said ‘Overall it was better so we are happy’.  Asked how he had improved his Associated, he explained, ‘We changed tyres and it was really really good.  The only thing is they are running after me so maybe they can see if the track is faster or not so they can change tyres and stuff.  On the 10-minutes I think I am the more consistent one so I mean that’s the goal for us and we see tomorrow.’

Summing up his second seeding run Boots said, ‘from the first one we wanted to try and increase a bit of rotation in the car and get a bit more speed but the grip came up so it was like a double whammy so it became a bit more edgy to drive so we’ll go back to our previous settings.  The track is coming in now and the grip is coming up so we’ll see tomorrow how the track is but definitely in that last one a lot of people were saying the grip has come up quite a lot, you could see it watching the cars as well.  We’ll go back to the set-up we had this morning just to make the car more calm and easier to drive now the track has become more aggressive.’

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