Ronald Volker tops Q1 at AOC Shanghai

Ronald Volker has taken the opening qualifying round at RCI V2 in Shanghai, the German waiting until the last lap to take the top spot from practice pace setter JJ Wang. While JJ held the top spot from the start and even set his fastest lap of the event, a late mistake by the Chinese-American youngster meant he would have to settle for 2nd. The 3rd spot would go to Jilles Groskamp who would again set the second fastest lap time but some small mistakes lost him time to his rivals.

Volker was very happy to TQ the opening round, saying that he stayed behind JJ for most of the run but with 1 and half minutes left in the run and being 0.4 seconds down he started to push ‘maximum hard’, timing it perfectly as he managed to pass his rival on the very last lap. Driving the heat with 2nd run tires he said the car was much better but even still he will make a small change to get a little more steering into the car for Q2. Along with all his competitors, he expects the 2nd round of qualifying to be a rocket round as the temperature drops and the grip rises, a single run from the 3 counting.

Controlled practice pace setter and track local JJ Wang led the entire run until he came too close to a track board on the 2nd last lap and had to let off to avoid hitting it. This was enough to demote the LRP driver to 2nd for the round albeit 0.1 down on his rival. ‘I’ll get him in the next one’ stated Wang, saying he believes he would have taken the round had it not been for his late mistake. Knowing the track better than anyone, he knows that Q2 will be faster conditions on track and is confident he will get the job done in today’s final heat.

Former World Champion, Jilles Groskamp says the ‘speed is there but there are just too many bobbles’ otherwise he was right there pointing out that on an average of the top 3 driver fast 15 laps there is little or no difference. Feeling he is lacking steering, he is having to push the car harder to get it around the track and this is leading to the small mistakes that are losing him time. For the next qualifier the Infinity driver will run less rear toe to get more steering, not wanting to change too many things ahead of the all important rocket round.

A dejected Naoto Matsukura said that the changes he made to his car for Q1 had not worked and he had more understeer than before. While the car is consistent, he plans a rear spring change in an effort to improve rotation, a problem that was causing the Japanese driver to make many small mistakes during the run. Another issue for the World Champion is that he has run out of certain parts for his prototype Tamiya car, having broken the same part at last weekend’s ETS in Austria and so he can’t push the car too hard in case he crashes and breaks. Naoto continues to dominate 1/12th scale with his Roche car, the 3 time WC is using the event as a test session for this year’s World Championships in Beijing as it will be run on the same ETS carpet used here.

Another driver who continued to dominate his classes, Germany’s Jan Rathiesky was clearly faster in both the 13.5 classes as well as in Formula. Running all those cars with the same setup used last week in Austria apart from a higher ride height, in Modified he has completely changed his car in an effort to improve on his 6th position and is now just under a second behind local ace Rocket Zhang who sits fifth. In 13.5 Boosted, Jan leads Gavin Kwok and Jimmy Qian while in 13.5 Blinky it is 11 year old Nicholas Koh in 2nd with Max Park 3rd. The Formula class sees Xray driver Heng Heng sitting 2nd while Jimmy Qian once again rounded out the top 3.

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JJ Wang tops controlled practice in Shanghai

Controlled practice at the opening round of the 2016 Asian Onroad Championships at RCI V2 in Shanghai is now over and in the Modified Touring Car class it was local superstar JJ Wang who is top seed for qualifying. Holding a small advantage over his competitors, the next fastest driver was Yokomo’s Ronald Volker who was just under 1/10th of a second slower than the Chinese American driver over 3 laps. 2012 World Champion Jilles Groskamp was 3rd fastest, and along with JJ was the only driver to post a sub 10 second lap.

JJ Wang, who is running an Xray having tested a number of touring car options following his departure from HPI, says his focus through practice has been on his driving. With the car remaining unchanged from free practice, for qualifying he plans to make some tweaks to the setup in order to get more steering, this tight track layout meaning a lack of steering is heavily punished. Also noting that, because the track is being used by 1/12th scales on foam tires, the traction changes a lot between runs. Now the top seed for qualifying, which will see 3 rounds of which the single fastest run will count, JJ said that knowing the car has the pace it is now ‘up to me to drive it’.

Ending the two rounds of controlled practice 2nd overall, reigning ETS Champion Ronald Volker used his 2nd round to run-in his second set of race tires. With the first run on new Sweep tires being slightly slower he was unable to drop into the 9 second lap times, and having made a small setup change for CP2, he will revert back to his CP1 car setup for the first round of qualifying. Still suffering from slight understeer and with his pit man Yukijiro Umino, sick, going back to the hotel between runs, his focus for qualifying is to just make a clean run.

Newly signed Infinity driver Jilles Groskamp was 3rd and had the second fastest lap time in CP2 with a 9.995 having set the fastest lap time of the weekend in free practice with a 9.8 second lap. With Infinity not having an electric touring car yet, the Dutch man has been testing several chassis options and like JJ settled on an Xray although he admits that currently his setup is very far from that of JJ and Xray team driver Jan Rathiesky. Having not run on carpet for 4 months he is very happy with his current pace saying he is fast every time he goes on track and is pleased to be ‘not so far off JJ’.

Reigning touring car Champion Naoto Matsukura is running double duty this weekend, racing his Tamiya prototype in touring car and his Roche prototype in the 1/12th scale class. Fourth fastest in touring car he, like all those ahead of him, is looking for more steering and for Q1 will switch to a softer front spring to try and remedy that problem. In 1/12th scale, where he heads JJ Wang and Heng Heng in 2nd and 3rd, the 3 time World Champion says while his car is good it is lacking some overall traction and will change to a harder tire for the first of the 2 qualifying rounds being run today, the 3rd and final round to be run on Saturday morning.

As expected, Jan Rathiesky topped controlled practice in 13.5 boosted & blinky touring car as well as the Formula class and is also sitting 6th in modified touring. The German is making his first trip to Asia having spent just a few hours at home following his double win at last weekend’s ETS Rd3 in Wels, Austria. In the boosted class Jan topped controlled practice from Gavin Kwok and ARC front man Jones Chu while in blinky it is Nicholas Koh and Sean Wang who are his closest competition. In the Formula class the advantage was much less, just over 1/10th in 3 laps with Heng Heng 2nd, with a large gap back to 3rd placed Sean Wang.

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Chassis Focus – E.C. Kim

Chassis – VBC  Wildfire D08
Motor – Muchmore Fleta ZX 5.0T
ESC – Muchmore Fleta Pro V2
Batteries – Muchmore 5400 mah
Tires – Sweep (handout)
Radio/Servo – Sanwa/Xpert
Bodyshell – Protoform LTC-R 2.0
Remarks – Korean ace E.C. Kim is running the latest version of the Wildfire called D08 in the short shock configuration. His car is also equipped with titanium screws, an aluminium chassis, hard compound c-hubs and a front brass suspension brace.

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