March 9, 2012

Martin puts Tamiya top in 4WD practice

Current British Champion Lee Martin has topped 4WD Buggy in official practice for the second round of the inaugural TLR/Spektrum Euro Offroad Series.  The Tamiya Racing Factory driver set the fastest three consecutive laps at the Black Country Arena in Belgium, ahead of the Schumacher of fellow Brit Tom Cockerill and series leader Joern Neumann.

Running a thicker prototype Tamiya top deck on his TRF502 along with new braced camber link mounts from LMR/Rudebits, which turns the links mounting upside down and gives the buggy greater rigidity, Martin ended the day 7/10ths of a second faster than his rivals.  Feeling his buggy is lacking a little steering he said he doesn’t want to make any adjustments for this for fear that it will cause it to start flipping on the high bite astro turf track.  Having switched to heavier front arms and moved his shocks to the maximum laydown position possible over the course of the 4 practice rounds, the 2010 European Champion said qualifying is now going to be all about optimising how much your tyres are scrubbed in for each round of heats.

Cockerill was very happy to end up second fastest in practice admitting the times were much better than the buggy felt around the track.  Switching to a heavier shock oil in the third practice it improved the aggressiveness while still leaving the CAT SX3 safe to drive.  Planning to run stiffer wishbones the Schumacher engineer said this should give him a more consistent buggy on new tyres which he will use this evening’s open practice to scrub in for qualifying.

Winner of the opening EOS race in the Czech Republic last month, Team Durango’s Joern Neumann said his DEX410 was very good.  Running his stock astro turf set-up he said unlike his 2WD buggy it is working fine and he has made little or no changes to the buggy today.  Asked if he was concerned at being almost 9/10ths slower than Martin, the man he beat to become European Champion, the German ace said it was no problem and he is sure over a full 5-minute run it will very close between the Top 6 drivers.  Team-mate Hupo Honigl, himself a former multiple European Champion, said his buggy felt good and he just needed to drive cleaner tomorrow.

In between the Team Durango drivers was TLR’s Mike Truhe and Dustin Evans, both of whom are experiencing 4WD on a European style indoor track today for the first time.  Opting to sit out 4WD at Round 1 of the series, Truhe said being faster than Hupo was good enough for him right now as today was like starting all over again.  Having mainly run the XX-4 back in the US lately he said he is having to adapt back to the XXX-4 along with contending with a surface that is totally alien to him.  Evans, who did a great job in the morning’s 2WD practice to top the time sheets, said he was pretty happy to end up 5th fastest.  Running the XXX-4 on the track for the first time in first official practice he said considering from where he started out to where he is now after just four runs with the aging buggy he is extremely happy as they have made huge improvements each run.

Mixing it up among the strong line up of team drivers present in Belgium for the second round of the Euro Offroad Series, France’s Sebastien Wartelle set the seventh fastest time in front of the TLR’s lead European team drivers Darren Bloomfield and Miguel Matias, who was a podium finisher at the season opener.  British driver Nathan Ralls completed the Top 10 outpacing young Swedish talent Oskar Levin who after starring in both 2WD and 4WD qualifying at Round 1 is so far struggling to get to grips with the track here in Charleroi.

In 4WD Short Course the time sheets at the end of practice was a copy of the final podium in the Czech Republic with Joern Neumann fastest from Hupo Honigl with Mike Truhe third.  Dustin Evans took his Ten-SCTE to the fourth fastest time but some 4 seconds off Neumann.  In 2WD Short Course the pace was set by Team Durango designer Gerd Strenge.

View complete results here.

View the event image gallery here.



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