3-in-row as Bernadzik is Top Qualifier again ‘Down Under’
It’s the third season of the Cayote backed Asian Buggy Championships, the third time Pine Hill Dirt Racing track has hosted the Australian round, and completing the hat trick Team Associated’s Alex Bernadzik has just secured the overall TQ for the third year in a row. With this year’s event attracting its biggest ever international entry, it was the Australian who delivered in the deciding fifth & final round of Nitro Buggy qualifying. With Japan’s Kouki Kato and American Tyler Jones the other TQ contenders, having taken the first two rounds of qualifying on Thursday, Infinity’s Kato would be the first to bow out as he crashed on his first flying lap and suffered a flameout. Sparko driver Jones also crashed on his first lap giving Bernadzik, who already had the fastest qualifying run from Q4, the breathing space for a second TQ run. This time his closest challenger was Mayako’s Pekko Iivonen, the gap 1.531-seconds at the end of the 5-minutes. Overall, behind Bernadzik it will be Kato who lines up second on the grid followed by Jones, Iivonen and last year’s winner Caleb Noble.
Pleased to turn around his qualifying, having lost out on earlier TQ run due to late driver errors, on becoming the Top Qualifier, Bernadzik said, ‘That was really clean. I haven’t checked the times but I was told my times were pretty much 31-seconds every single lap. The car was the easiest its ever been to drive. A nice & safe run and got it done’. Converting his 2023 TQ into a win, but comingup one place short last year, on tomorrow’s 45-minute Main he said, ‘I think it is all just tyres now. I was running a slightly newer set of tyres there. I ran them in EP first and then by the end of the EP run they were coming on good so for nitro they hit the ground running straight away.’ Also securing the eBuggy TQ, he will now use those tyres for the electric triple mains and plans to brake in a new set of tyres for the Nitro Buggy Final. With tyre wear of no concern, the wear minimal on the oil treated dirt surface, in terms of fuel he said, ‘it’s quite a slow entry into pit lane so if we can get away with doing 9-minute stops we can probably save 8 or 9 seconds. We’ll do a full test run tomorrow in practice, but if we can we’ll do 9-minute stops.’
Despite his crash/flame-out denying him a chance of the overall TQ, Kato said once he got his buggy back on track ‘it was not so bad’ following changes made between rounds. Changing the rear shock position, the Japanese 1:10 Buggy Champion said it was slightly better and in the practice tomorrow they will go more in that direction with set-up to try further improve the buggy. On the subject of run time, the two Asian Buggy Championships race winner replied, ‘for me 7 & a half is easy’ before adding ‘9-minutes maybe not.’
‘Disappointing honestly’ was how Jones described the final qualifier. He explained, ‘I put a new set of tyres on to scrub in for eBuggy, they were pretty good straight off the bat but I hit the tube on the back stretch and had a super long marshal so that pretty much ended the run right there.’ He continued, ‘When I got marshalled I got put right in front of Alex and he was on a good run so I kind of moved over and followed him for the rest of the heat.’ Trying Hotrace’s new Napoli tyre in the final eBuggy qualifier he said, ‘On my car it was too numb. I probably could have changed my car. They weren’t bad, they were just slow and didn’t really turn so I’ll stick to Sahara which is what I have been running all week. I had the Napolis mounted so I just wanted to try them to see and now I got that out of my head,’ On the final, he said, ‘my car is really good and I am super comfortable going into the final tomorrow so I’ll just mount some tyres and hangout with the boys.’ Running 10-minutes in the last qualifier, on run time he said, ‘I think we can go comfortably on 9s (minutes)’.
One of the success stories of the Mayako Youth Mentoring Program, on his final qualifier Iivonen said, ‘It was better, the car felt better again. It was a bit uncomfortable, and a bit sketchy but still we need to work on the car for this tyre’. With that tyre being Jetko, the Finn having started out on the event on 6mik, he said, ‘It has much more forward traction and the pace looked better so will stay with the tyres and figure out the car in the practice tomorrow – I think I can find something.’ On the final he said, ‘Starting fourth is not too bad, any thing can happen in the final and people are making mistakes so well see.’ Another who believes his ‘run time should be fine’, the 22-year-old plans to use the Main Final practice session to make a final call on his fuel stop strategy.
‘Besides crashing on the first lap the last one wasn’t too bad’, joked Noble when asked about final qualifier, the Tekno driver setting the third fastest time to go with his P2 from the opening qualifier. He continued, ‘It was pretty clean after that, we are chipping away at the car and it’s getting closer.’ Asked if can be in the mix from 5th on the grid, he replied, ‘I think if the car is a little better I think I can be in the mix for at least a podium, which I would be pretty happy with.’ On what he is thinking to change on the car to find a little more speed he said, ‘Maybe a little thicker shocks and maybe go up in the diffs a little bit. I don’t want to do too much cause the car is pretty close, its just I can’t really push it but it is better than it was this morning so that a good sign.’ On run time, the 18-year-old said, ‘my run time is actually better than its ever been. We reckon I can do towards 9-minutes, we’ll double check that in the warm-up tomorrow.’
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