Iivonen tops seeding at Asian Buggy C/ships Australia
Mayako’s Pekko Iivonen has got his first ever visit to Australia off to a strong start, the Finn topping seeding for Round 3 of the Cayote backed Asian Buggy Championships in Brisbane. Racing on the oil treated Pine Hills track, Iivonen set the fastest 3-consecutive laps of the two seeding rounds ahead of another track first timer Kouki Kato, the Infinity driver 3/10th of a second off his rival. Heading the local challenge was last year’s Top Qualifier, the Team Associated of Alex Bernadzik just 8/100ths off the Japanese visitor with the Tekno of fellow Aussie Jackson Beale fourth fastest. With 2025 the attracting Australian round of the championship’s biggest international entry, it was another visitor who completed the Top 5 with American Sparko team driver Tyler Jones travelling 29-hours for his first ever race outside of the USA. With a threat of rain showers tomorrow, the oil treated surface being very slick in the damp, drivers are in for a busy first official day of action in Brisbane as Race Director Scotty Ernst pushes to get two rounds of qualifying in the books today in case.
One of the stars of the previous round, the Philippine Masters back in May, Iivonen is settling in well on his first visit Down Under saying, ‘It super nice here, I really like it, the track is super nice, food is nice, so it’s super good.’ On his performance the 22-year-old said, ‘the track feels super good and the car is working quite good. Today I was testing tyres in practice because I didn’t have my rims or inserts yesterday so I just ran with the same set all day. I think now I have found a set I will go with for the race and the car feels super good’ – his tyre choice being the 6mik Dash Inter. Asked how he is finding the track layout, the surface similar to that of the Philippine Masters, he said, ‘I really like it. The surface is good, the grip level is super nice, it has a bit more grip than the Philippine Masters, and I like the size of the track, it is super nice. Some of the jumps there are some holes in the lips that throws the car around but otherwise its really good.’
Asked about his seeding runs, Kato replied, ‘It’s getting better’. Claiming his second Asian Buggy Championships race win at the previous round in the Philippines, the 19-year-old explained, ‘we changed the diff and the anti roll bar for the second run and it was better. In seeding 1 I had super understeer so we are working to get more steering. We just need to dial in the car a little bit more and I think we are looking OK for Q1.’ Choosing Hotrace’s Sahara Clay as his tyre of choice, Kato was very complimentary of track surface and layout, saying, ‘the track layout is super nice and not too difficult and the grip is very high. The track size is perfect, not too big, not too small.’
Describing his car as ‘very edgy’ in the first round of seeding, Bernadzik said he ‘made a few changes to settle it down’ for SP2 but then felt ‘the grip disappeared from the track a little bit’ resulting in the car being ‘a bit slidy and a bit slow’. Planning to revert back to his SP1 set-up, on the overall track conditions he said, ‘for sure compared to the last club day we had, the grip is definitely higher. And then once rubber goes down on the track the grip comes up’. Running JConcepts Double Bar on his RC8, he said this is his normal go to for the Pine Hill track, the 23-year-old living around 1-hour from the track which is located in a local park area. For qualifying, Bernadzik feels his ‘consistency is very good’ and if he ‘just backs off a couple of percent’ he ‘can keep it clean for the long runs’.
Living just 20-minutes from the track summing up his seeding effort Beale said, ‘the first run was really good, the car was super easy to drive and super fast so I thought I would just make a couple of changes and see if I could gain a bit more speed or make it even easier to drive.’ He continued, ‘I made a couple of changes for the second one but it wasn’t as good. I was a little bit too stiff with my rear springs. The car was still really good but just wasn’t were it was at in the first seeding round’. Running Jetko J1 Ultra Soft tyre, asked how the track compares to normal weekly racing here, the 19-year-old said, ‘maybe the grip is a little higher cause of the constant laps on the track this weekend and we’ve being oiling it a lot recently so that too brings the grip up.’ For Q1 he will revert back to the same spring he ran in the first seeding round and he might also take a couple of mill out of the rear droop and then ‘just drive it’.
On his seeding Top 5, Jones said, ‘the last seeding round my car was a lot better. I just made a couple of small tweaks.’ The 25-year-old added, ‘I have never really raced on anything like this. I am used to loose dirt and rough bumps.’ Asked what the biggest challenge of adapting to the hard polish surface was he said, apart from the cast he is in after breaking his wrist some time ago, ‘the layout is challenging, it’s technical so you’ve got to hit your marks every lap. My car’s set-up is fine. I have kind of being driving bad and blaming my car but overall I am having fun and I’m getting better each run. I just need to get a bit more comfortable with the track surface’. On tyres he has gone with the Clay Sahara from Hotrace.
