Kurzbuch setting practice pace at 200mm Worlds

Simon Kurzbuch is setting the practice pace at the 200mm Nitro Touring Car World Championships in Gubbio, Italy.  The reigning 1:8 World Champion sits top of the time sheets from pre-event favourite Dario Balestri with 8 of the 12 rounds of free practice at the Miniautodromo Internazionale M.Rosati track completed.  A driver with limited experience in the 1:10 class, Kurzbuch took his Shepherd to the fastest three consecutive laps in this morning’s opening practice bettering the fastest time of the first official practice day set yesterday evening by Balestri’s Capricorn.  With no clear advantage holder so far in terms of outright pace, the top 6 so far made of drivers representing 6 different manufacturers, the separation is only 0.156 of a second.  For reigning champion Alexander Hagberg his title defence has not started out well with the Xray driver finding himself 56th fastest of the 120 starters.

‘A perfect morning’, was how Kurzbuch summed up his somewhat surprise pace.  The dominant force and man to beat in 1:8 since winning his World title in Brazil last year, the Swiss ace said, ‘we improved the car all day yesterday and then everything came together this morning. It’s going really good’. Having not attended the Warm-up Race, allowing him to take part in Friday & Saturday’s ‘International Driver Practice’ days, Kurzbuch said his preparations for his first 1:10 World Championship also included a trip to Italy for two & 1/2 days of testing.  Runner-up at last year’s 200mm European Championships behind Bruno Coelho, he said having found a good base setup for his Velox V10 in FP7 the remainder of practice, 4 more rounds today and 4 rounds of controlled practice tomorrow, will be an opportunity to ‘make changes and check how they work’.

Winner of the Warm-up race held in extremely hot conditions in June, Balestri declared ‘I’m happy’ with how practice is going adding ‘I have a good feeling with my engines and car’. Despite having only one day of practice due to his participation in the warm-up race excluding him from the two IDP days, the Italian said ‘I already have my normal set-up for this track so I am just using each run to trying something different but this is only to kill time until the start of the race’.  With drivers who attended the Warm-up Race reporting it to be a lot cooler now, Balestri said ‘normally its more hot this time of the year here but I expect the high temperatures to come.  That means a lot of changes but we already know what we need to do for that’.

Top Qualifier at the 2010 World Championships held in the USA, Robert Pietsch was pleased to be sitting P3 declaring ‘I was happy how this morning went’.  Describing the first run of the day as ‘fast’, the 08:00 start time for practice round allowing drivers to take advantage of cool track conditions, the Mugen designer said his MTX-6 had less rear traction and so for FP8 he switched to a different chassis.  The new chassis features a smaller rear end cut out than the standard version making the car more rigid.  Another change to the chassis is the section around the weight adjuster with the new design not effecting the chassis flex as the weight is moved back or forward in the car.  While understeer is a characteristic of the Gubbio track, the former 1:8 World Champion said while the chassis change has improved the car they ‘still need more rear traction and will work on that for the next run’.

Despite posting the fourth fastest time reigning European Champion Coelho said it has been ‘difficult up to now to get the right set-up’.  The Xray driver said ‘my engines are OK but (I am) all the time trying to find steering’.  The newly crowned Euro Touring Series Champion added, ‘today it’s getting better.  We are on a good way (with the set-up) now and I hope by the end of the day we will have better steering’.

Heading the early Serpent challenge, Warm-up Race podium finisher Alessio Mazzeo sits P5 with his updated 748.  Featuring new diffs and drive shafts, the Italian said overall ‘we are ok’  but added ‘we haven’t found the perfect set-up yet’.  While he had ‘a very good’ car for FP7 conditions, the former European Champion said ‘we expected warmer conditions like at the Warm-up race’ and ‘we still need to fine tune the set-up for the (overall) cooler conditions’.

Debuting Infinity’s first entry into the 1:10 class, Jilles Groskamp said, ‘to be competitive with a prototype car on its first race is nice’.  The reigning ENS Champion added, ‘2 weeks ago we weren’t even sure we would run the car’.   Staying on after the 1:8 European Championships in Sweden last month to test the first version of the new prototype he said they discovered some ‘major problems’ there and which they have been able to fix. Travelling to the Montegiorgio track in Italy prior to arriving in Gubbio to break in engines he said this also allowed them to work on a set-up aimed at improving steering and as a result of that ‘from the first practice (in Gubbio) we are right there’.  Trying ‘one thing each run’ , he said the basic set-up is already good and that going to the next level is going to require to ‘try something major’ adding that they might ‘take a dremel to the chassis to get more flex’.  In FP8 he would suffer some problems with the cars brake which meant a number of trips to the pitlane for adjustments but the Dutch driver said despite this he was ‘still not so far off the pace’.

Sitting in P7 just ahead of Serpent team-mate Dominic Greiner, Mark Green said his pace was ‘reasonably good but could always be faster’.  The British driver said his XRD engine and 748 chassis are ‘running nicely together’ now after struggling with ‘a lot of understeer when (they) came here’.  Describing the issue of understeer around Gubbio as ‘quite a challenge’, he said there is ‘still a little bit there’ in terms of improving the cars steering through set-up adding ‘there are no more big steps left in the car and its 1/100ths rather than 1/10th of a seconds that (they) are after now’. Suffering a broken conrod in the ‘quick’ FP7, Greiner said for FP8 he 748 was ‘now too easy’ to drive.  Top Qualifier at the last Worlds where he finished on the podium, the German is confident the pace is there and they just need to do a little fine tuning for ‘understeer characteristic of the track’ and get the best steering available from the 748. Behind Greiner, Quentin Leroux and Teemu Leino complete the Top 10 times.

‘Struggling’ was Hagberg’s response when asked how he was getting on.  The Swede said, ‘we can’t find a good balance in the car’ adding, ‘we are a little lost with set-up and don’t know what direction to go’.  Working off set-up information gathered during the Warm-up Race in July he said ‘its not good as the conditions are colder than expected’.

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