January 10, 2015

Chassis Focus – Alexander Hagberg

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Chassis – Xray T4 ’15
Motor – ORCA 5.0T
ESC – ORCA
Battery – ORCA 6200mAh
Radio/Servos – Sanwa
Body – Protoform Speed6
Remarks – Fastest representative of the Xray team here in Odense, the Swede is running an version of the T4 ’15 equipped with both an aluminum chassis and a 1.6mm top deck. His car also features the characteristic white low friction belts together with a full AVID ceramic bearing set. To reduce the weight, Alexander is using a HiroSeiko screw set.

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January 10, 2015

2 from 2 for Neumann in opening 4WD qualifiers

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Defending Champion Joern Neumann got 4WD Buggy qualifying at the DHI Cup underway in the best way possible by posting two TQ runs in the opening two rounds at the Danish event. Chasing a fourth consecutive win of the title, offroad being introduced at the famous touring car event in 2012, Neumann would headed an unchanged Top 3 on both occasions with HB’s David Ronnefalk claiming a pair of 2nd places ahead of Xray’s Martin Bayer.

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Pleased with his performance, having struggled a little in 2WD qualifying, Neumann said in the opening qualifier he found his now privately run standard kit Durango to be a little edgy.  Putting this down to running on new tyres and adjusting his driving back from having run the four rounds of 2WD qualifying he said leaving the car unchanged for Q2 it was ‘good’ second time round.  Happy with how the car with which he took the overall TQ at the 2013 World Championship is performing he said he had no plans to make any changes. However having received some new double jointed driveshafts which Arrowmax have made for the DEX410 the German said he might use them in Q3 to alleviate issues he is having with the standard shafts on full steering.

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Making no changes to his new D413 between qualifiers mistakes were the biggest problem for new HB signing Ronnefalk.  The 18-year-old said after early mistakes in Q1 he managed to keep it clean for the rest of the heat to salvage good qual points getting second on the last lap after Bayer crashed.  Overall a better Q2, setting the fastest lap, he said on hearing it was very close between himself and Neumann he ‘went for it on the last lap’ but ‘got a bit too excited’ leading to a crash that cost him over 3-seconds.  Looking to make his Orion powered buggy a little easier to drive for Q3 he plans to go up in the oil in the rear diff.

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‘Speed OK, car feels good, just doing stupid stupid mistakes’, that was Martin Bayer’s straight up summary of where he was at.  The former European Champion who was Neumann’s main challenger for the win here in Odense last year said he has the equipment to again challenge and its simply bad driving that is letting him down.  Making just a gear ratio change between heats he said his focus is now just on improving his driving.

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Behind the three race contenders it was former European Touring Car Champion Jonas Kaerup who was best of the rest in Q1 while Team Associated team-mate Niclas Mansson who was fourth in Q2 ahead of Dane’s Frederik Hovgaard and last year podium finish Jesper Rasmussen.

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January 10, 2015

Yokomo duo to go head to head in TQ decider

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Yokomo’s star drivers Ronald Volker and Yannic Prumper are to go head to head for the overall TQ at the DHI Cup while the battle for who will start second is wide open.  The penultimate qualifier at the Odense event again saw a number of drivers laying down a TQ pace but it was Volker who would make the least errors to take it with second going to HB’s Freddy Sudhoff after an impressive drive.  One of the drivers to set the early TQ pace Alexander Hagberg would despite a roll on his penultimate lap complete the Top 3 followed by Marc Rheinard and Martin Lissau.

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With five drivers running faster laps than him, Awesomatix’ Viljami Kutvonen posting the fastest lap, Volker said changes to his tyre prep and a small set up adjustment on his BD7 had improved his car but the German added it was not 100% as he would like to have it.  Having to work harder than normal to be fast he said while he topped the times by 3-seconds this was not a true refection of how close the field is and unlike his rivals his run didn’t contain mistakes.  For the final qualifier when he will need to see of the challenge of Prumper, admitting his fellow countryman has slight better pace, he will after a 10-minute discussion with engineer Yukijiro Umino make further changes to his tyre prep and set-up.

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Suffering a string of mistakes Prumper eventually decided to pull his BD7 off at just after the 3-minute mark.  With no complaints about the car he said the problem was simply down to too many mistakes from the driver.  Having taken Q1 when the pressure of his pace caused forced Volker to push over the limit and make a mistake he said he knows he has the speed to deny his team-mate the overall TQ, which would be a good start to his 2015 season with 2014 having been a rather fruitless season for the 21-year-old.

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Having went the wrong direction with a suspension change for Q2, Sudhoff said he just went the opposite way and the result was a car that was ‘very easy to drive’.  Suffering one moment when he had the car on three wheels through the fast chicane, he said they now just need to make some fine adjustments to find that last 1/10th of a second. Still in remote contact with Andy Moore and HB team manager Hiroyuki Kasuya he said hopefully they can find that for the final qualifier and allow him to battle for a good starting position in the final.

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Hagberg described the first 3-minutes as ‘very good’.  Changing his tyre prep he said the car was better than before but his problem this time was that when himself and Rheinard ran noise to tail, Hagberg in front, he lost his rhythm.  In the end he would make a ‘stupid mistake’ on his second last lap losing over a second in time as a result.  Happy with the progress made in the consistency of the car he said they were now down to the last minute of the race seeing a drop off in pace and he hopes further tyre prep changes would rectify this.

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Trying a different additive and again making his rear diff harder, Rheinard said these made little difference. The slightly dejected Tamiya driver said he will again go up in the stiffness of his TRF419 diff adding that with little to lose he will also use the last run to try out Protoform’s new Dodge Dart bodyshell.

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Running a heavily modified Awesomatix, Martin Lissau said while the round produced his best result, changes made to the car to try and help it with the bumps had made it super hard to drive.  Saying his ‘pace is really good for (him)’ the Dane plans to revert to his Q2 set-up when he was on a good run before suffering a spin.

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Completing the Top 6 Marc Fischer said the increase in the oil weight in the diff of his Serpent was ‘not good’.  Going to 8000w he will revert back to 6000w.  The German also found after the run that his rear left shock was loose on the S411 something he acknowledged wouldn’t have helped the car’s performance.  Behind Fischer Viljami was seventh fastest followed by Xray’s onroad chassis designer Martin Hudy.

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