April 21, 2012

Surprise TQ run from Rheinard

Touring Car World Champion Marc Rheinard pulled off a surprise TQ run in the penultimate round of 2WD Buggy qualifying at finale of the Euro Offroad Series in Dortmund, Germany. The Tamiya driver topped the time sheets from Team Losi Racing’ Darren Bloomfield and Durango’s Hupo Hönigl while the three title contenders Joern Neumann, Dustin Evans and Lee Martin made mistakes, the latter’s error resulting in a broken shock tower.

Rheinard, who joked he can’t remember the last time he TQ’d a round in Touring Cars, said starting last after his DNF in the previous qualifier he just aimed to run an error free 5-minutes and helped by the mistakes of others the end result was a TQ run in a class that is the least favourite of those in which he competes.  Team-mate Martin was on for a potential Top 3 time but with less than a minute to go caught one of the hay bails on the edge of the table top causing his Tamiya to rotate upside down and break the front shock tower on landing.

Bloomfield, who is full of praise for the power delivery and feeling he is getting from his new Team Orion electrics, said fresh tyres improved his TLR22 allowing the Brit to post his fastest 5-minute run.  Unfortunately for team-mate Evans, who TQ’d the preceding qualifier and felt he had got a handle on the controlled dBoots tyres, he was wrong and going for an extra run on his first set of tyres didn’t pay off as they were passed their best.  Struggling for pace the American eventually finished 7th after a mistake on lap 10 lost him 5-seconds but he said a top result was already out the window after lap 2.

Recording his best qualifier Hönigl said both his LRP powered DEX210 and driver were much better this time round and was very pleased with third.  Fourth fastest for the round, Durango team-mate Neumann got caught out by fresh tyres, the German having two bad laps as he struggled with his buggy being very edgy.

Completing the Top 6 were Team Losi Racing drivers Mike Truhe and Oskar Levin, the young Swede who was one of the stars of qualifying at the opening EOS event finally getting in a solid run.

View complete event results here.

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