World Champ Coelho takes opening 4WD qualifier

World Champion Bruno Coelho has taken the opening round of 4WD Buggy qualifying at the DHI Cup. Making his debut at the event, the Portuguese ace headed an Xray 1-2 from Martin Bayer with HB’s David Ronnefalk completing the Top 3.  For reigning champion Joern Neumann he would open his quest for a fifth consecutive title with 4th.  Having battled it out for pole in 2WD, Michal Orlowski would get a P5 from the first of the four qualifiers with eventual 2WD Top Qualifier Tom Cockerill completing the Top 6.

Only 8th fastest in practice yesterday, Coelho said a switch to his EOS Round 2 winning set-up for qualifying was a big improvement.  With his XB4  flipping a lot in practice and having ‘not so much steering’, he said the set-up change had made it ‘easier to drive’, added ‘more steering’ and the buggy now ‘doesn’t flip’.  After some little mistakes early on in the heat, Coelho said he was able to push hard and make back the time.  Setting the fastest lap which was over a 1/10th up on that next best time which was set by Ronnefalk, he said with the car now very good he would leave it unchanged.  Looking across at his team-mate he joked, ‘I beat Bayer so I’m super happy’, the pair always keen to add a bit of humour to proceedings with friendly banter aimed at each other.

In response Bayer said ‘as I said yesterday expected Bruno to come’.  Fastest in practice, the former European Champion said the result was ‘how it should be with Bruno fastest so I am happy’.  The lead development driver for the XB4, he said ‘the car is comfortable on the track so its all good’.  Continuing, he said the ‘car is good its just on me to drive it’.

Describing his run as ‘OK’ , Ronnefalk added ‘after the disaster in 2WD it was nice to run 4WD again’.  The 20-year-old said with a lot more traction today his Orion powered D413 was ‘oversteering a lot’ and he had to make adjustments on the track.  In terms of the qualifier he said ‘I had a rough first few laps and didn’t hit my lines which led to a crash’.  With the change in track conditions for Q2 he will run a different cut on the front tyres as well as making some rear end set-up changes.

‘OK, I think 4th was the maximum I could achieve’, was how Neumann summed up his opening performance.  The factory Serpent driver continued the ‘speed is not there’.  Describing his SX4 as a little difficult the German said the problem is how the car is landing and this is losing time.  With Serpent’s 1:10 designer and Neumann’s long time engineer Gerd Strenge on hand to support his driver, Neumann said ‘we know what we need to change and we will have this for the next EOS race’, the third round taking place  in Germany later this month.  With one crash he said maybe 3rd is possible in Q2 but his body language was that his unbeaten reign as DHI Cup Champion was looking like a mammoth task to maintain.

View the event image gallery here.

Cockerill is 2WD Top Qualifier at DHI Cup

After a poor first day of qualifying at the DHI Cup, former Champion Tom Cockerill turned things around today to claim his first overall TQ at the Danish event.  A DNF in Q1 and only 5th in Q2, the Yokomo driver upped his game for the final two qualifiers to snatch the pole position for the A-Main from early dominator Michal Orlowski.  Matching Orlowski’s two TQ runs it was Cockerill’s times that would give the British driver the tie breaker to claim the honour of Top Qualifier in this the fifth year offroad has been part of the DHI Cup.

Commenting on his Q4 performance and having started the previous heats from the back of the pack, Cockerill said, ‘I was up the grid this time and in the pack from the beginning.  Once Orlowski crashed I then knew I just had to stick with him’.  Changing on to a different set of tyres for the final qualifier he said his YZ-2 was ‘good’ but the ‘final’s a different game’ he will make a couple of changes to the set-up.  Looking to make the car ‘more racey’, the World Championship finalist plans to raise the rear link a little and take 1mm out of the ackermann. Asked about the finals, he predicted the track would lead to ‘close racing’. Describing it as an ‘understeery track’ he said this meant it was easy to get your corner entry wrong which was making for overtaking opportunities.

‘I crashed again’ was how Orlowski summed up losing the overall TQ.  Having crashed on the last lap of Q3 when on a TQ run that would have secured him pole position early, the factory Schumacher driver was on new tyres for the decider and trying to break them in during the warm-up he said they had a good feeling for the qualifier.  Setting down the early TQ pace he described his mistake on lap 6 of 15 as an ‘unlucky crash’ as he jumped ‘too short’ on the middle jump leading to the lose of 4-seconds.  ‘Still happy with 2nd’ on the grid, the 14-year-old said with good sets of tyres for the finals he is ready to race for the win.  The Polish driver said there is going to be lot of places for passing and feels the table top is one area there will be many opportunity to pass due to other’s errors.

The surprise of yesterday’s qualifying when he finished both heats P2 behind Orlowski, Team Associated driver Niclas Månsson would count those results to secure 3rd on the grid.  Qualifying 9th last year, the Swede said it was his driving than let things down today with both heats containing a lot of mistakes.  19th in Q3 and P9 in the final heat, the 26-year-old said his B5M is good and he will ‘just leave it as is’ for the finals in which his aim is to ‘try and stay on the podium’.

2WD Champion for the first two years that offroad was added to the event, Joern Neumann will start 4th. His worst starting position to-date, the German said the problem in Q4 was that he ‘pushed too hard’.  Needing a TQ or P2 to start in the Top 3, he said it was everything or nothing but his 110% approach didn’t pay off as he crashed twice early on.  Happy that his modified Serpent SX4 is good he will leave it unchanged for the final saying he just needs to take his driving ‘back to 100%, not 110%’.  The German, who remains unbeaten in 4WD, said with everyone making small mistakes there would be plenty of opportunity to overtake over the 5-minute races.

Completing the top half of the grid, Martin Bayer said ‘from 5th I don’t know what I can do.  In the middle of the pack is one of the worst positons’.  Two places better than he qualified last year, he said the section after the start is not so tricky so hopefully this will lead to clean starts adding ‘if this is possible it could be possible to make up some places’.  Making his DHI Cup debut Xray team-mate Bruno Coelho will line-up 7th on the grid tomorrow behind top local hope Yokomo’s Frederik Hovgaard.

View the complete 2wd Buggy results here.

View the event image gallery here.

Cockerill comes good in Q3

Former Champion Tom Cockerill finally came good in the third round of 2WD Buggy Qualifying at the DHI Cup, the Yokomo driver denying another former Champion, Joern Neumann, his first TQ run of the event on the final lap. Having taken both qualifiers at the Odense event yesterday, Michal Orlowski looked like he was about to seal the overall TQ early but a last lap error allowed Neumann to jump to the top of the timing screen.  It was to be short lived however as Cockerill, who started from the back of the 10-car heat after a tough first day of qualifying, went fastest by 0.081 of a second.

Commenting on his TQ run, which importantly was a new fastest time, Cockerill said ‘I texted tech support and after being told off about my driving got some set-up suggestions’.  The tech support he was referring to was Yokomo lead driver Lee Martin whose nitro commitments has him racing in Italy this weekend.  Switching to a flat front arm, adding more caster and rebuilding the shocks on his YZ-2, Cockerill said the changes gave the car a little more steering with it now ‘tucking in nicer’ into the corner at the end of the straight.  The only driver who can deny Orlowski his first overall TQ at the DHI Cup, Cockerill said the only change he will make for the decider is change to a new but already scrubbed-in set of the handout Schumacher tyres.

‘Car was pretty good’, was how Neumann summed up Q3.  The Serpent driver, who is running a modified 4WD buggy in 2WD, said for the first minute and a half he was quicker than Orlowski but the Pole was faster in the middle of the heat.  Only changing to a new set of tyres for the qualifier he said this was a slight improvement but to try and get his SX4 more consistent for Q4 he will run a heavier diff oil.

Running tyres for a third time, Orlowski said he knew from the warm-up laps that it was going to be a struggle as his Schumacher was sliding around on the past their best tyres.  After a mistake at the first corner on the opening lap at the table top, the 14-year-old said he ‘just pushed as hard as (he) could’ and setting the fastest lap it all looked to be working out until the last lap.  Making a mistake at the table top, he said as he tried to recover he caught at dot and flipped his KF2 SE.  Losing over one & a half seconds, he would drop to third just 2/10ths off Cockerill’s TQ pace. Behind Orlowski, Xray’s Martin Bayer would get a P4 followed by Yokomo driver Frederik Hovgaard with David Hassel completing the Top 6.

View the event image gallery here.