Defending Champion Sahashi leads way in early seeding
With seeding practice underway at the IFMAR 1:10 Nitro World Championship in Bangkok, Thailand, it is defending Champion Tadahiko Sahashi who leads the way with 2 of the 4 rounds completed. The Infinity driver who secured his title 2-years ago on the opposite side of the capital city, set a fastest 3-consecutive laps of 45.540 as driver grapple the Huge RC Circuit’s challenging high grip levels that constantly change over the day. With Sahashi second attempt 3/10ths slower, it would be Thai driver Game L. Mongkolpan who would set the pace of SP2 6/100ths of a second up on Sashasi. With drivers best two points scores to determine the order of tomorrow’s qualifying heats, overall it is free practice pace setter Teemu Leino who holds P2 at the halfway mark ahead of fellow Scandinavian Wilck Viktor with Mongkolpan holding fourth having only managed the 13th fastest time in SP1. While Sahashi comes into the 10th running of these World Championships aiming to become the first driver to defend their title, current 1:8 Onroad World Champion Dario Balestri will chase the record of becoming the first driver to hold both title simultaneously with the Italian completing the Top 5 ranking going into the lunch break.
Qualifying fourth when Huge RC previously hosted the Championship a decade ago but retiring from his Semi Final on that occasion, Sahashi joked the track hasn’t got any easier in the 10-years that have passed. Feeling things are going better this time round, asked about his car, the Japanese driver said overall it was working well but given the ever changing track conditions he is having to make little changes each run to keep up with how the track is. While Huge RC is a covered in track, the outside weather conditions at the time of each run effect traction considerably and it is knowing what to change the key to a good run. Another factor is the tyres and while wear is low, there is also a big difference between new and second run tyres given the sensitive nature of the balance of the car in the high traction. While reporting understeer in SP2, Sahashi was not too concerned going into the second half of today’s action, the real business end of things getting under way tomorrow with the first 3 of 6 qualifiers.
Asked to sum up his performance so far, Leino responded by saying, ‘Yes it is all good. Yesterday was a good day, today the track is a little bit different so we need to find a little more pass.’ Top Qualifier at the 2012 World Championship, which like the 2022 Worlds was hosted at the city’s other famous circuit “RC Addict”, the Finn added, ‘the trick is that when you start to add the steering on the car then it start to flip so you always need to be on the edge but then the weather changes a little bit, you have sunny days or raining days and you need to try with the set-up a little bit.’ Asked about his previous experience of the track’s high grip from 2014, when he TQ’d two rounds of qualifying but ended up lining up in the 1/4 Finals, Leino replied, ‘this time there is more grip, it’s just crazy grip this time and it is the battle with that which is the biggest challenge for everyone.’
As the reigning European Champion of the 1:10 Nitro Touring Car class, Balestri was quick to sum up all 58 drivers view of the Huge RC Circuit by saying, ‘this track is one of the most difficult situations of the grip we have found in the last 10-years I would say.’ The Italian continued, ‘but thanks to our guys testing here we arrived with a good balance already. The factory brings some upgrades for this track so the car is very good and you see Infinity is all competitive, we just need to find the right window with the tyres to be fast.’ Highlighting the car having 50grams of weight on the front and super short shocks, he said the most important thing comes from the shock set-up with him running very heavy oil and very soft springs. On tyres he explained, ‘When you start on new tyres you are half a second slower almost, the car is understeering but then it starts oversteering so you need to balance the steering. The wear is so low but I think it comes from the track when the tyres absorb some additive they start to flip the car so its important to balance the first window with the tyres second window.’ Asked if he liked the track layout, he said, ‘yes I like it but it would be even nicer with a little less grip, maybe it would be more fair for everybody also.’
Coming into these World Championship as the reigning 1:8 GT World Champion, it is fair to say the mood in the Toni Gruber camp is very low. One of the few drivers expected to mount any kind of serious challenge against Infinity making it three titles in a row, the Capricorn driver is at a loss to explain his lack of pace. Sitting down in P22 with a best run of the 19th fastest time for SP1, his time 1.3-seconds off Sahashi’s effort, asked if he could give us an update on how the event has started out the 2023 European Champion replied, ‘Are you sure?!’. After a long pause he added, ‘to sum it up so far we are struggling with the conditions.’ Asked if they have been making any progress with getting the car to his liking he replied, ‘if you look at the lap times no. Of course at the beginning you need to learn the track so the lap times improve but then for the last three days we stay the same. Sometimes we can drive a little bit easier, some times it is more hard but it’s the same lap times.’ Admitting they are running out of ideas to try and also that many changes in different directions with the set-up have resulted in little to no change in the feeling of the car, he said his biggest issue is that he doesn’t have enough of a feeling from the car to ‘drive relaxed, if you have to push a lot then you make mistakes and can’t drive the right line.’
With no official factory entries from Mugen Seiki, Shepherd or Xray (World Champions here in 2014 with Alexander Hagberg), the originally awarded host location of Costa Rica deterring a lot of manufacturers from supporting the already niche category, all the weight of nitro onroad pioneering manufacturer Serpent falls on US racer Bryce Butterfield. The reigning ROAR National Champion finds himself P18 after two seeding runs and explained his situation as a, ‘work in progress’ adding, ‘the balance feels pretty good but the overall lap time is not producing right now. We have a really good car for qualifying maybe but for 3-lap right now we are missing it so we are still looking.’ Asked if qualifying runs were not the ultimate goal, he replied, ‘If I am honest I would always like to be a little bit faster so we are going to make same changes and if we don’t like them we can go back.’ Asked about the challenges of having no team-mates to work with in terms of set-up he admit was ‘it is challenging especially on a track I have never been to before’ and while used to high traction circuits in the US he added the grip here was ‘on another level’.
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