Video – Qualifying Round 3

Action from Round 3 of Modified Touring Car qualifying at the 2025 TITC at RC Addict, Bangkok.

View full results here.

Orlowski claims TQ honours on TITC debut

Michal Orlowski has claimed the overall TQ honours at the TITC in Bangkok, the Schumacher driver securing pole position for his debut at the legendary touring car race when for the third time in a row he topped qualifying.  While it might be the Polish driver’s first time at the race that has earned itself the title of the unofficial World Championship of Touring Car, the race is proofing to be very much a repeat of last November’s official IFMAR World Championship where Orlowski and Bruno Coelho were the class of the field with their rivals fighting over 3rd position.  The third & penultimate afternoon time qualifier would prove slower than Q2 but in terms of order the Top 6 were identical.  While it was Coelho who had the outright fastest car on track this time round he once again could not better Orlowski, the gap the closest yet though at 0.058 of a second.  Getting his tyre gluing correct this time round, Marc Rheinard got the closest he has been yet to the Top 2 as the Awesomatix driver got a P3, 2.9-seconds off Orlowski’s TQ time.  Summing up the round’s finishing order as ‘boring’, Lucas Urbain added another P4 to his tally with Akio Sobue and Hayato Ishioka completing the Top 6 for Axon.

Joking with Orlowski that he just made what is billed as the most difficult touring car race in the world look easy by wrapping up the Top Qualifier honours with a round to spare the high profile TITC Rookie replied, ‘It’s been really good.  I think our car is very good with the ever changing conditions, it works well, we have a set-up that works in high grip, low grip.  That really helps at this race.’  Making a change to his set-up for Q3 he explained, ‘we are making such small changes but the track is changing and the car was really hard to drive now, from being very easy to very hard I lost the rear end a few times at the beginning and it allowed Bruno to catch me.  Then I felt the car was a little better once the beginning aggressiveness went away.  I saw Bruno was pushing and this allowed me to close back up and take the TQ by a very small margin.’  While pleased at executing the first part of the event so well, the 1:12 World Champion knows there is still a lot to do saying, ‘I am happy to TQ but I have been watching this race for many years and I know that anything can happen in the finals.  I am just happy I have the pace to fight at the top but the starting position here I don’t think it’s so important.’

Appearing very relaxed as Day 2 of the event is in the books for the Modified drivers, Coelho summed up Q3 as ‘another very close run’.  He continued, ‘I again had a clean run and the car is working well, I mean we are fighting for very close tenths like at the Worlds so I am really happy.  It’s the first time we are here with the new team, such a hard race, the car is performing very well for such an early phase.  Michal has already TQ’d, that is done, which gives us some room now to test different things on the car and try to make it different for the finals.  Asked about track conditions compared to Q2, he said, ‘it was very similar but the sun was out so I could feel a little bit more drop over the run’.

Asked if he was finally happy with how he glued the side walls of his tyres this time round having got it wrong in Q1 & 2, Rheinard replied, ‘Yeah it was better’.  On the qualifying run itself the German explained, ‘The beginning was pretty OK and then I had one scary lap were I went on two wheels so I had to settle down and two times onto the straight I hit the curbs too much and it got loose so I took it easy after that, I think I lost a second from this and a little bit by my driving, it wasn’t good in the last run.  The gap is smaller for sure and I am going to try something different for tomorrow’.  With just one more qualifier scheduled for tomorrow, the winner of the TITC 19-years ago said, ‘I hope to stay in P3 because this might be a good spot, with these two we know what can happened.  I will try to be right there if there’s a chance.’

While Modified qualifier proved somewhat repetitive the same can’t be said for Open Brushless.  Round 3 would see a third different driver score maximum points this time in the form of top seed Soren Sparbier.  The Mugen Seiki driver would take Q3 from Singapore’s Ethan Cheng with one incident hampering the run of Q2 winner Olivier Bultynck and ending the run of Q1 winner Lukas Ellerbrock.  Ellerbrock’s Awesomatix took heavy damage after a crash with the Xpress of Thai driver Game Mongkolphan which was completely destroyed while Bultynck lost almost 5-seconds as his Awesomatix got stuck on debris from the collision.  Overnight it is Sparbier who hold the TQ with a TQ and P2, followed by Bultynck with a TQ and P3, with Ellerbrock holding third with a TQ and P4, meaning its going to an exciting TQ showdown in tomorrow’s fourth and final qualifier.

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Video – Qualifying Round 2

Action from the second round of Modified Touring Car qualifying at the 2025 TITC at RC Addict, Bangkok.

View full results here.

Orlowski again in Q2

Having kicked off the opening day of the TITC yesterday by TQ’ing the first round of qualifying, Schumacher’s Michal Orlowski made it two from two this morning as he again topped the second round of qualifying ahead of Infinity’s Bruno Coelho.  A very humid day in Bangkok this morning, drivers faced much higher traction levels than expected with Orlowski able to knock 4-seconds off his Q1 time, its evening timing meaning most expected that to be ‘rocket round’ of the four scheduled qualifiers.  With Coelho 4/10ths back, it was top seed Marc Rheinard who completed the Top 3 a considerable 3-seconds back as the Awesomatix driver again made the wrong call on his tyre gluing.  Lucas Urbain would improve on his Q1 effort by going one better to set the fourth fastest time ahead of the Axon pairing of Akio Sobue and Hayato Ishioka.

Summing up his second TQ run Orlowski said, ‘The gap between the cars was really small so Bruno started really close behind me which caught me a little off guard, it was basically like a final he was so close behind so it was for me to not look at him and get into my rhythm but at some point I put in a few good laps and increased that gap.  We were both on the limit as we were far ahead of everyone else but the car was really nice.  I made a tiny adjustment after practice today were my car felt better but such a small change made such a big difference so the car wasn’t ideal, it was easy to drive but a little too easy, but I’m happy to take TQ with a really fast 5-minute run.’  Asked about today’s track conditions he said, ‘It is really high grip, one of the highest grips we’ve had.  Everyone said the grip for the race will go down but I think this is the first TITC when the grip is higher for the race than practice.’  For Q3 he plans to go back on the set-up change, adding ‘we’ll see what the track does, it’s cloudy and high humidity, maybe some rain, anything can happen.’

Having two mistakes in his opening qualifier yesterday, on Q2 defending Champion Coelho said, ‘It was clean run.  I did everything I could but the track today had huge traction which at the TITC is not normal ’cause on the race days the traction normally goes lower.’  Chasing a fifth TITC win this weekend on his Infinity race debut he continued, ‘We were not ready for that high traction so we need to work on the car for that, my car was a bit stuck so we need to get more rotation for the next one.’

Reacting to his P3, Rheinard said, ‘Aah, I made more glue but it was way too much so it was pushing the whole run and I had to drive like an idiot to get it to turn.’  Having gone with too little glue on the tyre wall for Q1, he said, ‘what I had now would have be perfect for the night session,  otherwise the car is fine and it’s just a matter of finding the right gluing for the tyres.  I will try again less for the next one ’cause now it was super safe and I could run full lock almost everywhere which is not fast, lucky I still have a 3rd’.  He concluded, ‘If I stay 3rd I am happy to stay behind these two (Orlowski & Coelho)’.

Asked about his run, Urbain replied, ‘To be honest I am fairly happy with my run, a couple of overshoots here and there but overall it was fairly clean, one of my best so far.  It was a good fight with Marc but I lost it in the end.  He is dropping but I am dropping even more than him in the end and simply not fast enough to the two guys at the front, it’s really a big gap.’  As to where the Awesomatix driver felt he was loosing time, he said, ‘I was close to keep up for 2-minutes and then maybe I loose half a second but I loose another 3-seconds the next 3-minutes and that’s quite a lot.  It’s not a surprise, it’s been a trait on my side for years.  I start well and I finish my tyres too much.  I am sure there is stuff I can do with the car to prevent that but so far I have been unable to do it with pure driving so I need to keep digging.’

In Open Brushless it was Olivier Bultynck who delivered the TQ pace in the second round.  Setting the fastest lap of the run, the Awesomatix driver ended up 2-seconds clear of the Xray of Adam Izsay with the Mugen Seiki of top seed Soren Sparbier completing the Top 3.  Having taken Q1, Lukas Ellerbrock had a number of bad laps and his Awesomatix ended up with a P4.

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