Coelho cruises to A1 win as Matsukura fends off Sawada
Bruno Coelho has cruised to the win in the opening A-Main at the FEMCA ISTC Championship in China with all the attention on the battle for second between Naoto Matsukura and Shin Sawada. Starting from the TQ, Coelho’s Xray quickly gapped the field with a few interesting spectators, namely Marc Rheinard, Jilles Groskamp & Atsushi Hara, looking on. With the track maintaining the higher traction driver’s enjoyed for the final qualifier, them all having had to deal with very low traction for the first run of today, second place qualifier Matsukura found his Infinity coming under the increasing attention of the Xray of Sawada. Seeing off the first challenge, Sawada dropping back after a few laps of running on his rear bumper, the ISTC Spec Class World Finalist came back for another go at the former World Champion but couldn’t find anywhere around the GDC track to make a move. Finishing 3-seconds back on the winner, Matsukura would have just 2/10ths on Sawada. Having a lonely race Kouki Kato would cross the finish a further 1.8-seconds back.
Reacting to his text book race, Coelho said, ‘It was a pretty solid final, the car is working good and we are trying now some set-up things on the electronics’. Asked if he trying to achieve something specific with his Hobbywing ESC or just testing different things, he replied, ‘we are trying to generate more traction with the electronics which is always nice to play with.’ The track evolving traction levels, the 3 time back to back World Champion said, ‘The traction increased a lot, I don’t know why, but it went up a lot which is good for everyone. I didn’t change the set-up much to what I had before because everything I changed I went back on again as it didn’t really feel better so I already came to the conclusion that the problem was between the tyres and the carpet. Now the track and the car is coming back to what it was.’
Asked if he was under pressure from Sawada, Matsukura responded with, ‘No pressure. Today after Q4, the first minute feels like traction roll so for A1 I didn’t want to roll in the first lap. So I make a save lap but then I see he (Coelho) is already gone. I have nothing to do.’ He continued, ‘He (Sawada) was a little faster but almost same lap times so I was not nervous, I was just scared of mistake. On the curb just a little touch and then you traction roll. So I just drive safe and if I drive normal line I know he cannot pass.’ Having struggled with a lack of rear traction for most of qualifying asked if he had found something in his set-up he explained, ‘No. Now it is more hot’. With the traction rolled he added, ‘I think the tyre is too hard in the beginning and now that it is completely broke in when the temperature (of the tyre) comes up there is a risk of traction roll.’ As a result he has added extra glue to the tyres.
Reacting to his race, Sawada said, ‘The car is very good but it is difficult to overtake.’ Enjoying the higher traction, which when asked he replied was ‘no problem’, unlike Matsukura he hasn’t felt the need to glue the side walls of his tyres. He was in no doubt what he needs to do in A2 if he is to pass Matsukura saying, ‘I need to push harder to get passed Naoto. I will make no changes to the set-up and instead just try to drive harder in the next one, more push, more push.’
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