Bloomfield tops opening Qualifier

Darren Bloomfield has topped the opening round of 2WD Buggy qualifying at the TLR/Spektrum Euro Offroad Series presented by Horizon Hobby.  The Team Losi Racing driver took his Team Orion powered 22 to a fastest time of 15 laps in 5:09.191 to take the first of the four scheduled qualifiers ahead of the three title protagonists, Joern Neumann, Dustin Evans and Lee Martin who took the next three positions on the time sheets at the Dortmund event.

Describing his run as ‘kind of safe’, Bloomfield said the run was not very fast but was clean and this played in his favour as the others suffered crashes.  In terms of his buggy, the British 1:8 Offroad National Champion said overall it felt pretty good but for Q2 he will raise the rear links so as to try and make it ‘pivot’ better in the corner.

The fastest man in yesterday’s practice, Neumann said his run started well but a coming together with Bloomfield’s team-mate Mike Truhe on the penultimate lap cost the German 3-seconds and ultimately the TQ for the round.  The Reedy Race Champion said his Speed Passion DEX210 feels really good, endorsed by his fastest lap of Q1, and added once he can get a clean run he is confident he has the edge over his rivals.   Team-mate Hupo Honigl, who was sixth fastest, said he should have done the morning’s free practice as after running 4WD for the second half of yesterday’s practice day he didn’t re-adapt to his LRP powered example of the 2WD buggy but added he thinks it was good to drive and everything should be fine for Q2.

Evans said he was actually happy with third considering how hard his buggy was to drive.  Very edgy, the US Champion said he is still struggling with how sensitive the front tyres are to the handling of the buggy.  This led to a crash by the Team Losi Racing driver early in the run but Evan hopes that by clipping down the pins on his front set of controlled dBoots tyres he will have a safer buggy for his next qualifier.  Truhe was another to get caught out by his tyres. Running a used set in the morning practice he was very comfortable with his buggy he switched to a fresh set for his opening heat but said it was very edgy.  With just a minute to run the American had a ‘huge’ crash on the straight which cost him 8 seconds after which he said he was left frustrated leading to further mistakes dropping him to 8th for the round.

Tamiya Racing Factory’s Martin was much more positive this morning after a tough opening day yesterday. The European Champion had to come through traffic due to starting 8th and with too much steering on his Vega converted TRF201 he suffered an early mistake.  Set to start 4th for Q2 having set the fourth fastest time ahead of team-mate Marc Rheinard, the winner of the preceding round of the EOS said he is in better form and feeling more connected with the track today and so the day should get a lot better.  Rheinard said he buggy was ‘fine’ and he just needed to cut out crashes after he put his buggy, which is Martin’s spare mid motor mounted chassis, on its roof which cost him 3 seconds.

Paul Bradby was fastest of the Team Associated squad as he took his C4.1 to seventh just ahead of team boss Brent Theilke.  Bradby, who along with Thielke is running in the second fastest heat grouping, said he struggled a little with traffic but said it was own fault for being too slow in timed practice yesterday.  Happy with his buggy he said it was down to him to drive it.  Just missing out on making 15 lap with a 5:00.889, Theilke said Q1 was his first clean run since arriving in Germany and he was happy to take 8th for the opening round.  Starting 8th in his heat, he said once he passed some traffic he was out on his own and he was not sure how hard to push as he had no one to pace himself against.  Starting 2nd behind Bradby in Q2 he said he should be able to judge his pace better and hopefully improve his time.  Changing the set-up on his C4.1, which is belonging to Neil Cragg, three times before his opening qualifier Theilke switched to big bore shocks and was happy with their performance.

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