Coelho TQs opening qualifier at TITC

Chasing his third consecutive victory at Asia’s most famous event, Bruno Coelho has got TITC 2018 off to the best possible start backing up his huge practice pace advantage with a TQ this morning in the opening round of qualifying.  In Bangkok for the past week in preparations for the 16th running of the race, the Xray driver was quickest from Japanese Infinity pairing Akio Sobue and Naoto Matsukura, his advantage over Sobue just shy of 1.8-seconds.  Coelho’s team-mare Alexander Hagberg would opening the 5 rounds of qualifying with the fourth fastest time ahead of fellow European Marc Rheinard while local hero Meen Vejrak led the Yokomo challenge completing the Top 6.  Finding himself in the second fastest heat after seeding World Champion and former TITC winner Ronald Volker would get only a 9th for Q1.

‘It was a very good run for me’, was how Coelho summed up Q1.  He continued, ‘I think the track was a little dusty and it was windy so my car was doing some weird things, it wasn’t a problem with the car but just the conditions’.  Top Qualifier last year, he said, ‘Naoto made a mistake on the first lap which gave me space to breath and from then I just tried to control my pace and tried to not over heat my tyres.  It was very good’.

Closest to Coelho both on overall time and outright speed, his fastest lap just 1/10th off Coelho’s quickest, Sobue described his first qualifying attempt as ‘quite good’. The Infinity driver suffered ‘one spin’ saying his car ‘started out good’ but as the run went on his car began to ‘get loose and push’.  Overall pleased with the set-up on his IF14 he will make some ‘small changes’ for Q2 to try and increase the car’s steering.

Losing over 1.5-seconds to Coelho over the opening two laps, second seed Matsukura said, ‘the first two laps my car was a little loose and I spun out on the first lap’.  Running Infinity’s new alu chassis on his car, he said, ‘my car has good corner speed but after 2-minutes the track gets really loose so I need to change the set-up to make the car more stable and easier to drive.  From 3-minutes I have almost same lap times as Bruno.’

Summing up his run to the fourth fastest time, Hagberg said, ‘It was OK. I struggled the first lap, I was lacking traction.  After that it was good so maybe I needed to do more warm-up laps’.  The Swede continued, ‘I am pleased with my car but every time the track keeps changing so it is hard to predict how it will be but it is always like this at this race’.

Fifth fastest Rheinard said, ‘I have no feeling.  The car gets loose at one point and then its twitchy. It’s not easy to drive but I’m still happy to get a Top 5’.  Asked about a set-up change for Q2, the German replied, ‘I changed the set-up completely from yesterday but it still drives the same’.  For team-mate Jilles Groskamp, who TQ’d all three qualifiers on the opening day last year, a clash with race runner-up Nicolas Lee, left the former World Champion with an 11th for the round.

The final driver to complete 20-laps in Q1, Vejrak described his P6 as ‘a good first run’.  The Thai driver continued, ‘my plan was to drive safe and smooth.  The traction always changes between runs.  Last night was super high and and made a set-up change for that but it is now lower today and I could not push it or I would spin out but I’m happy to get some good points for the first one’.

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Track Focus – Infinity Addict Circuit

Track Name – Infinity Addict Circuit
Owner – Pumin Songpaiboon
Country – Thailand
Location – Bangkok
Direction – Clockwise
Surface – Asphalt

Infinity Addict Circuit, better know simply as RC Addict, is one of a number of RC tracks the city of Bangkok boasts and for the 7th time it hosts Asia’s best known race – the TITC or Thailand International Touring Car Championship to give it its full title.  Now in its 16th year, the 2018 edition of the TITC has once again attracted the world’s best touring car drivers with reigning champion Bruno Coelho the man they are all out to beat.  Having undergone a complete resurfacing ahead of last year’s event, the main change this year is a revised layout within the 55m wide by 27m deep track space.  Another less obvious change until you drive the track is the fact a number of bumps have developed in the asphalt over the last 12-months.  One big visual difference on arriving at the track is that the street based containers which housed a number of air conditioned pit areas for drivers have been removed leaving the former 200mm World Championship circuit more open looking.

Having been in Thailand for almost a week in preparation to attempt a claim a third consecutive TITC title, Coelho described the revised layout as ‘a little more technical than last year’ saying ‘the layout is very good, I like it and there is a lot of traction which I like too’.  Comfortably quickest in the seeding practice, the Xray driver did however say that while there was ‘one main bump which you could avoid’ last year, ‘now there are bumps everywhere’.  Not causing him any major issue he said the bumps did mean they had to do a lot of work in early practice on finding a good suspension set-up.

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