Grid finalised at FEMCA ISTC Championship

With the TQ decided in favour of Bruno Coelho went he went 3 from 3 in the first of this morning’s qualifiers, the remaining 2 rounds would determined the rest of the A-Main grid for the 2024 FEMCA ISTC Championship.  With traction levels improving for Q4, it was the World Champion who continued to reign in Foshan taking the round from Infinity’s Naoto Matsukura.  The 2014 World Champion would ‘dump’ in the final qualifier as Coelho’s Xray completed the clean sweep but the Japanese driver will start second for the triple finals despite his DNF.  Making it an Xray 1-2 in the final qualifier, P2 his best run, Shin Sawada will line-up 3rd on the grid ahead of the Infinity of Kouki Kato.  Top Indonesian driver Bowie Ginting completes the top half of the grid with his Xray with the Awesomatix of Rocket Zhang heading the local honours in P6.  Russian driver Maxim Laverychev also driving an Awesomatix will carry the number 7 with the star of last year’s inaugural Foshan Invitation RC Championship Vening Zhuo, who finished second to race winner Ronald Volker, ending qualifying in P8.  The grid is completed current Chinese National Champion Jerry Dai and fellow Chinese racer Lo Lo and his Serpent.  In 17.5 Blinky the Axon of Kenrick Fong secured the TQ from Simon Wang.

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Five Touring Car World Champions at GDC

Nothing to see here!!  It is not every day you end up with five Touring Car World Champions at your track but that’s what Gavin Kwok found himself with this morning at his GDC Indoor track in Foshan, China.  While Bruno Coelho and Naoto Matsukura where already in town competing at the FEMCA ISTC Championship the track is hosting, Marc Rheinard, Atsushi Hara and freshly crowned Nitro Touring Car World Champion Jilles Groskamp dropped in on their way to an event their electric sponsor Team Cayote is hosting next week.  These well travelled racers were all very impressed by the GDC facilities and are expected to return and race next time they are in Foshan.

Coelho Top Qualifier at FEMCA Championship

Bruno Coelho is the Top Qualifier at this year’s FEMCA ISTC Championship, the Xray driver picking up where he left off yesterday to top the third round of qualifying this morning in Foshan, China.  Faced with low traction conditions for the 3rd of the 5 scheduled qualifier, this would prove to be Coelho’s slowest TQ run so far with the World Champion unable to match the two 25-lap runs he posted in yesterday’s opening two qualifiers around the GDC Indoor track.  Again it was Infinity’s Naoto Matsukura who presented the biggest challenge, the gap however at the end of the 5-minutes still significant at 3.3-seconds this time round.  After a slow opening lap, Shin Sawada would recover to complete the Top 3 times, the Xray driver benefiting from his fellow countryman Kouki Kato rolling his Infinity on the curbing coming onto the main straight on lap 16 which cost him over 2.5 seconds.  Behind Kato, the Awesomatix of Rocket Zhang led the home challenge, the well known Chinese driver rounding out the Top 5 ahead of the similar car of Maxim Laverychev.

Reacting to the first run of the morning Coelho said, ‘It was pretty slippery this morning.  I think the track was for some reason much more slippy than yesterday.  I hope the track conditions will get better for the next round.  If not for sure we will have to change our set-up to generate more traction’.  Asked its thoughts on the low traction he said, ‘The tyres are getting more and more worn so they should be better so there is no reason for this low traction but I hope it gets better for the next one’.  Pleased to lock in the overall TQ early, the Portuguese driver said this gives him the option to use the last two rounds to try some more ‘drastic’ changes on the car.

A driver who has struggled to get traction, asked about his Q3 performance, Matsukura replied, ‘today the traction is even lower.’  Having checked over his car after crashing heavily into a marshal’s foot yesterday and thankfully found nothing to be damaged, the Japanese driver said he didn’t make any set-up changes for this morning but somewhat left scratch his head on how to find improvement said he now he must think what he can do for the remaining two rounds concluding ‘we need to try a new idea’.

‘No grip today, yesterday was so so, today no grip so I had to drive safe’, was how Sawada summed up Q3.  Having had a mistake while running P2 in yesterday’s second qualifier that dropped him to P3, the 20-year-old said this morning’s run was clean but ‘just too slow’.  Asked if he planned to wait to see if the track improves for the penultimate qualifier or change his car, he replied, ‘I will change the set-up.  I will make the car more narrow, narrow hubs.’  Having run 2.5 rear toe he will also go to 3 degrees for the next one.

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