Qualifying gets underway in Texas

After 5 days of practice things start to get serious today here at the 2010 IFMAR 200mm World Championship as the first round of six scheduled rounds of qualifying get underway at the impressive Gulf Coast Raceway here in Houston, Texas.  The fourth running of these World Championships all three title holders have made the trip to the USA as have nine of the 10 finalist from Portugal where Daniele Ielasi picked up his crown.

Ielasi has switched chassis since 2008 moving to Team Shepherd and the German manufacturer has on paper one of the best driver lines-up as they make their World Championship debut here.  Joining the defending champion is the Top Qualifier from the last Worlds Jilles Groskamp and current 1:10 electric Touring Car World Champion Marc Rheinard along with Top American racer Josh Cyrul.  Ielasi, who took third at the Pre Worlds back in March, said the track has been very different in practice but was happier with his Picco powered Velox V10 yesterday after making changes to the rear diff.  Despite crashes in both runs the Italian found the car to be more consistent and is pretty confident heading into the first qualifier later today, the day being divided into A and B groups with the faster B group doing their first two rounds of qualifying in the afternoon.  Like most of the top drivers Ielasi, who was 10th fastest in the reseed practice, said tyres are critical for this track with the rim hardness a major factor.

Team-mate Groskamp has not had a good start to his event after Sunday’s reseed finds him in the B group, but the Dutch driver believes he has found what may be the a key factor in his lack of pace.  Last night he found the receiver pack in his Orion engined Velox was running on four rather than the five cells.  Although running in the lower group of heats the European EP Touring Car champion believes this shouldn’t pose too much of a problem in terms of catching backmarkers having run in that group in yesterday’s two controlled practice runs.  Rheinard set the pace in that practice run, with the three fastest consecutive laps, and the three times electric World Champion starts qualifying with No.1 on his Novarossi powered Shepherd in the top heat.

The Runner-up in Portugal, Chris Tosolini heads the Serpent challenge.  Serpent failed to get any cars in the final at the last worlds but are looking a lot stronger with their 733 chassis.  All the drivers with the exception of Tosolini are running a new back end on the car here which team leader Michael Salven says give the car a consistent camber during suspension movement.  The Top Qualifier at the Pre Worlds, Tosolini has opted not to use the new rear end as he says he wants to run what he knows.  Asked how practice has gone the American replied ‘terrible’.  Having had some power issues with his Novarossi engines he adjusted the chassis set-up to compensate but having sorted the engines now he is struggling with that set-up.  Winner of the warm-up race, Team-mate Paolo Morganti said practice ran well for him and they have a good base set-up for the opening qualifier.  Although American, Morganti said he prefers European style track and believes the Gulf Coast circuit is really going to suit electric drivers.

Completing the podium at the last World’s was Team Xray’s Martin Hudy and the Slovak driver is pretty happy with how the last five days have gone despite finding the track very different to what he is used to in Europe.  Team-mate and 2008 Finalist Teemu Leino summed up the track perfectly saying its like racing F1 in Monaco, one mistake and your done.  The Finnish ace is already focusing his attentions on the finals as he believes consistency is going to be the key to a good result come Saturday.  Asked what area of set-up he has been focusing on Leino, who runs Orion engines, said tuning the engine is important as you have a lot of 180 degree corners and then a decent length straight meaning you need a good balance between low and high end power.  Described by many as the man who should have won in Portugal, Paul Lemieux is one of the pre-event favourites here.  The US National Champion, is one of two American’s on the team who could give the US its first World Champion.  Xray ran their own Challenge event here in May where Ralph Burch took the win against a really strong field and in the reseed here was top American with the fourth fastest time.  Another of the Team Xray drivers who is set to feature strongly is European Champion Dirk Wischnewski.  The German, who missed out on the final last time round after hitting trouble in his Semi, said his NT1 has been working perfectly since his arrival in the US and is confident he can make the final this time round having ranked 2nd fastest in the reseed.

Mugen’s challenge comes from 2006 World Champion Keisuke Fukuda but the Japanese ace said he is having difficulty adapting to the track layout.  Running Novarossi engines, the 29-year-old reigning Japanese Champion didn’t get to travel to the Pre Worlds and has had to use practice to learn the track and this has meant he is still not comfortable with the set-up on his MTX-4R which is hard to drive.  Direct qualifier at the last World Championships Francesco Tironi thinks it is going to be difficult to repeat that here and says just making the final here will be a very good result.  The Italian, who has a different chassis plate to his team-mates, believes the American’s have a distinct advantage on this track but is much happier with his Sirio powered example after making changes in the controlled practice that while didn’t make the car any faster made it far more consistent.  Another quick Italian on the Mugen team is National Champion Giuseppe D’Angelo who was a direct qualifier at the Warm-up race with his Reds Racing powered chassis. The Italian had battery problems in the race but is now faced with a different problem, with 5-minute run time being a problem due to the high temperatures they have experience over the past few days. Mike Swauger is another to carry the hopes of Japanese manufacturer but the American 1:8 Onroad Vice World Champion admits he is not as comfortable with the smaller 1:10 cars.

The first ever 200mm World Champion, taking the historic win in Brazil in 2004, Adrien Bertin heads the Kyosho squad.  The Frenchman really likes the layout but his campaign took a bit of a set-back in Sunday’s final practice run.  Suffering a one-way bearing failure on the straight his car came to halt just before the end of the straight and despite repeatedly calling it he was collected by 2008 finalist Dario Balestri’s Team Magic which resulted in both cars being binned.  Bertin switched to the same set-up as Japanese ace Takaaki Shimo for his second car and although much harder to driver he was able to knock 4/10th off his times.  Heading up the engine program for Team Orion he said an increase in oil content of the controlled Byron fuel has caught them out a little as he had prepared the engines for the lower 9% originally specified.

Balestri is hoping things will start to come together for him today having struggled in the practice.  A member of the factory Novarossi team, the Italian said the track is totally different to anything he has raced on before and following his crash with Bertin, the rain yesterday made it difficult for him to truly gauge with his second car where he is against his rivals.

After the first round of qualifying we should get a more accurate picture of who is where in terms of pace over the full 10-minutes with the drivers’ fuel man set to play a key role.  Yesterday, rain effected proceedings in the afternoon and forecast is giving rain again today and tomorrow but for now it’s dry despite plenty of clouds overhead.

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