Coelho tops opening seeding round in Bakersfield

As things start to get official here at the IFMAR ISTC World Championships in Bakersfield, California, it was Bruno Coelho who set the pace in the first of the 3 seeding rounds, the reigning World Champion’s closest challenger continuing to be Michal Orlowski.  With yesterday’s wind having died down and the morning sun bringing some extra temperature, drivers posted their fastest laps of the event so far around the Finishline RC Raceway with Coelho’s advantage over 3-consecutive laps 1/10th of a second on Orlowski.  Behind them it was Warm-up Race winner Akio Sobue who was 3rd fastest ahead of Marc Rheinard with Infinity’s Jin Sawada and Schumacher’s Mattia Collina completing the Top 6.

A run that contained a number of mistakes, Coelho summed SP1 with, ‘It was OK, I was fast but not really consistent.’  The Xray driver explained, ‘I traction rolled two times, the traction is pretty high now so we need to find something on the car to avoid the flip.’  Asked about the evolving track conditions, he said, ‘It is not windy so the track is more clean so I would say now it is 100% what we were at at the Warm-up’.

Reacting to his run Orlowski said, ‘It was good, the 5-minute pace is good, the car is nice, not perfect, but the conditions keep changing but now it’s more to what we know.’  The Schumacher driver added, ‘We have two more chances to make some adjustments.  I am confident with the 3-laps I have done so we can experiment a bit.  Mattia (Collina) went really fast now so we have two good working cars and we can test a few things on both cars.  He ran something I didn’t have on my car which I might try for the next one.’  On his rival, the Polish driver said, ‘Bruno is quick on 3-laps, he has good pace but keeps making mistakes but I am sure they are going to get the car easy to drive.  We just need to take advantage of the last two practices and find the best 5-minute pace possible.’

Axon’s Sobue was pleased with how the track is today but openly admitted there is a gap to the two ahead of him.  The Japanese drivers said, ‘Finally we are back to the conditions we know but Michal and Bruno after a few minutes have a very strong pace.  I think for 5-minutes I need better management of my tyres and to improve my driving to be with them.’

Reacting to his P4 pace, Rheinard described his opening seeding effort as, ‘Not that good’, adding, ‘I think my tyre prep was wrong.’  He explained, ‘Saucing the tyres twice I think makes it too stuck so the car wasn’t free anymore.  We will change this and maybe one or two car changes and see how it goes.  Right now the pace is not where I want to be.’  Asked about track conditions the 3-time ISTC World Champion said, ‘Luckily, the sun helped a lot.’

In the Spec Class, it was 2024 TITC Open Brushless Champion Simon Lauter who set the pace ahead of Xray pairing Jan Ratheisky and Stefan Schulz.  With a new Champion of the class set to be crowned this week with inaugural champion Alexandre Duchet not travelling to the US, asked about his practice so far Awesomatix’s Lauter said, ‘Overall I am super happy with everything, we expected difficult conditions like or not used to compared to the warm-up and the testing we did and for sure that’s what happened.  I think grip was even lower than ever when we were practicing here but now today it’s quite high guessing the right amount of traction that the track will get is most important for now because set-up choices can depend on how much grip has to have so as not to flip or snap oversteer, but for now we are quite happy & quite confident.’  On his rivals he said, ‘Jan is super strong and I expect some other guys to come up even more who you don’t see on the timing right now for example Ollie Payne and Shin Sawada as they were super strong at the Warm-up.’  Planning to test only little stuff for his next run, the German driver explained, ‘I just want to drive clean and not smash the car, one big thing is the rule of only one marked chassis, because it you smash it or bend it you are kind of f**ked to be honest.  I think I am very close the where I need to be, Jan and myself didn’t do 5-minute runs because we saved some tyres but I think it should be good on 5-minutes based on yesterday.’

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Coelho from Orlowski as free practice concludes at WC

Day 1 of the action at the IFMAR Touring Car World Championship in California has concluded with Bruno Coelho setting the pace from arch rival Michal Orlowski.  With 5-rounds of free practice making up the day’s action it was Coelho’s Xray that would set the fastest time in all but 1 round, the Schumacher of Orlowski the only other driver to top the time sheets when he set the fastest 3-consecutive laps in FP4 by just 0.009 of a second from Coelho.  With FP5 proving the fastest run of the day, it would be Marc Rheinard’s Awesomatix that would end up third quickest for the day ahead of Alexander Hagberg’s Xray with Axon’s Akio Sobue and Mugen Seiki’s Ronald Volker completing the Top 6 times on a windy day at the Finishline RC Raceway track.

‘It was a good day I would say’ was how back to back reigning World Champion Coelho summed Wednesday opening day of track action.  He continued, ‘Things are getting faster & faster and as we expected the traction is going up.  The cars are starting to be difficult to drive and you can see many people flip and making many mistakes.  We are getting closer to what we had here on our (pre race) practice so from now on it is all about small tenths every lap like trying to gain 0.001 every lap to be in the front at the end of 5-minutes and try not to do any mistakes’.  On the state of the traction at the end of the day, he said, ‘we are now doing very similar lap times to when we were here for testing so I would say I don’t really feel it is less grip but it feels just strange, it is different.  The cars are working in a different way but in the end they are doing the exactly the same as they did at the warm-up which was losing the rear the in the middle of the corner and through the round you go the more it happens.’  Asked if he would sum up the first day of the Worlds as Day as solid day, he said, ‘I would not say a solid-solid day but a very good one, a very good start I would say’.

Orlowski described his day as, ‘pretty good’, adding, ‘it seems like we found our way back to where we wanted to be because we got a little bit lost and towards the end it was very strong pace in FP4 & FP5.’  The reigning 1:12 World Champion who is chasing his first title in Touring Car after a very strong 2024 season continued, ‘Bruno is fast as well but he hasn’t done a full 5-minute run yet so I am feeling good for tomorrow.  We made wrong change for the last one so we will go back for tomorrow.  We just need to stay on top of things depending how the track changes, conditions today were quite windy and cold but we expect it to be less windy throughout the week and a little warmer, probably the grip will be coming up with more cars driving on it.  Less dust and more grip, that is where our car is the best.’

Touring Car’s more decorated World Champion, Rheinard felt he ended the day ‘not far off’ adding ‘but my driving is not great yet, I think I can still improve there.’  Asked in what way the reigning European Champion said, ‘my consistency, to try to stay longer on throttle sometimes and I am overshooting a lot so I am not happy with my driving but the car is getting better.  I think we still need to find something but so far so good.’  On the track conditions, he said, ‘From Run 1 to now the track improved for sure but let’s see how it goes for tomorrow when it is going to be cold again.  We don’t know if the traction is going to come up again quickly or if it will be like this morning, I don’t know.  Hopefully it is going to be traction right away.’

Asked how he was feeling at the end of the first day of action Hagberg replied, ‘Good, I think I have been in the mix all day, at least in the Top 5 pretty much all day.’  The Swede continued, ‘We are still working on the set-up and fine tuning it to find a bit more pace and try to move up into the Top 3 maybe.  It will be interesting to see the pace over a 5-minute run instead of just 3-laps.  I am fairly happy but I think there is more potential to unlock for tomorrow.  Asked where he felt he could improve, the former 1:12 World Champion said, ‘we are trying to find balance between rear traction and front end grip and to fine tune the roll centre, small changes to find the best balance with the car.  I think we are close and just need to work on the details.’

Winner of September’s official ISTC World Championship Warm-up race ahead of Hagberg, Sobue was another who felt his car was good but there was room for better from the driver.  The Japanese former podium finisher said, ‘Overall my day was good but I need to improve my driving more and work on better lines.  On a good run it is good but sometimes I go off line and it is super dusty so I need to tidy this up.’  Asked about his prototype Axon, he said, ‘This car is really good and the pace is good.’  Making ‘just small changes’ each round he admitted they resulted in ‘not so big differences’ but he feels the biggest gains for tomorrow are to come from his driving and a hopeful dying down of today’s wind.

Volker summed up free practice with, ‘It was a very intense day running two cars all the time to get more data.’  The former World Champion continued, ‘I had some rough runs but also some very good ones but overall I am very happy to be out there with the new car and I think we are going in the right direction.’  Ending up P6, he said that time was perfect explaining, ‘In the last one when the track was at its best I didn’t have three good laps in a row but otherwise I feel pretty confident.’  Asked if he felt he was in the mix he replied, ‘Actually I am not sure about this because I didn’t check so much results today as I was focused on my own car getting the feeling for it but at least I feel there is a high chance to be competitive.  The track was very tricky today with the wind so I think this was the lowest grip we will have for the week and the track should grip up day by day, I feel we are competitive with our new package’.

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Practice underway at Worlds, Coelho sets early pace

After of months of preparations & testing by manufacturer & drivers, the IFMAR 1:10 Electric Touring Car World Championships are finally underway in California with defending champion Bruno Coelho setting the early pace at Finishline RC Raceway.  With 5 rounds of practice on today’s schedule the biggest take after the opening two rounds of practice was grip, or more specifically the lack of it, the track completely different to what drivers had expected after previous visits to the track.  With the first practice round very much a systems check for drivers, issues with noise on the timing loop caused by a 7000 volt electric fence resulted in over an hour of a delay before drivers resumed with the second practice run.  With Coelho’s Xray fastest in both rounds, his 3-consecutive laps of the second practice a 33.146, it was Worlds Warm-up Race winner Akio Sobue who was closest on pace running a best time of 33.379 with Axon team-mate Hayato Ishioka completing the Top 3.  One of the favourites coming into this World Championship Schumacher’s Michal Orlowski set the fourth fastest pace ahead of Mugen’s Ronald Volker, Xray’s Alexander Hagberg and the Awesomatix of Marc Rheinard.

Chasing a third consecutive ISTC World title, asked about his first laps of the track Coelho responded, ‘The track is completely different than we were here’ joking ‘so what were we doing here for 2-weeks basically’.  He continued, ‘It is what it is and we need to adapt and change things to make the car works for the conditions but our car is working pretty good.  I am pretty happy about the start but it is how it finishes not how it starts so we will try to make the correct decision and keep on top of the conditions.’  Asked about the traction levels, he said, ‘the traction is coming up slow, it was never this low when we were here and it is also super cold, so basically nothing similar to what we had before’.  While waiting to see how the track evolves, the Portuguese ace who 10-years ago on US burst onto the touring car scene with his 2014 Worlds podium finish, said, ‘we will make small changes and try not make any wrong stuff so we still have a good flow on the track and with car and can keep it on the wheels.’

Summing up his first two outings on the track this morning, Sobue said, ‘My car feels good but for sure a different feeling from the Warm-up Race.  The track condition and temperature are a bit different and tyre is cold in the beginning but my car feels good.’  Running a prototype car which is the bases for a new car from Axon, the Japanese manufacturer describing it as 90% different to its currently available TC10 but also highlighting they don’t expected it to be released for some time, the 2022 Worlds podium finisher expects the track to improve but ‘slowly’, highlighting the wind is bringing dust back on to the track.  For the 3 remaining practices ahead of this evening’s official opening ceremony, Sobue said he plans to try some some small car changes as opposed to anything drastic based on the current low traction.

Winner of the 1up Racing West Coast Invitational at the track back in May, reacting to his two practice runs Orlowski said, ‘The track is completely different to what we know, the grip is much less and I don’t know if it is going to change or not so we need to move away from what we tested here and try some stuff we know from Europe and make some adjustments now.  We didn’t change much for FP2 and the track doesn’t seem to improve much a lot.  It seems it is gripping up differently to testing so a lot of changes but that is how the Worlds are, you prepare as much as you can and the conditions are totally different to what you expect.’  Asked his plan for the rest of the first day’s action, the Polish driver replied, ‘We need to see how the track evolves but we also need to make change because we can’t expect the track to come to the conditions of testing, it’s a risk, it’s a decision we need to make, we either wait and see or we need to adjust and see and come back in case it does.  At the moment it doesn’t seem like it will change and be like testing.’

Here with a brand new car from Mugen Seiki, a very upbeat Volker said, ‘I’m very happy with new car as it feels like a game changer, it’s a big improvement with its innovative design.  When I came pre-testing I wasn’t as confident with the Pre-Worlds car but now I think anything is possible.  I think the track conditions and everything is tricky and uncertain so not much time to get the car dialled in but I feel already it is pretty good’ adding, ‘the track is very easy to learn and drive’.  I didn’t come here for Warm-up Race when they had high traction but I surprised the traction is not so high so its uncertain for the day what the track will do but as always its the same for everyone’.  On making changes to his MTC3 prototype, the 2016 World Champion replied, ‘there is a lot to learn but the basic set-up from Robert’s (Pietsch) mind is already working great and he already knows what to change by watching my runs.’

Coming into these World Championships after a confident boosting European Championship win this year, asked how he found early practice Rheinard’s response was, ‘Not so good so far, feels like no grip, it’s like on ice so I don’t know.  When ever we practiced before the car always felt good but now in the low grip it doesn’t.  Let’s hope the traction comes up otherwise I think we are a bit lost.  Asked about the low traction, it quite windy this morning in Bakersfield, the Germany replied, ‘the wind for sure makes it worse but in general the traction is pretty bad and not what we are used.  Today is going to be pretty shitty with the wind, tomorrow should be better.  On changes to his car, the 3-time ISTC World Champion said, ‘I think it is more like the tyre prep right now because you can’t get so much from the car.’

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