Advantage Coelho as Xray locked out front of grid in Slovakia
Bruno Coelho is the Top Qualifier at the third round of the Euro Offroad Series in Slovakia, Xray locking out the Top 3 places on the grid at the Hudy Racing Arena. With the fourth & final qualifier set to decide between Coelho and Martin Bayer who would start on pole, the decision was made on the first laps as Bayer got the tabletop jump wrong needing to be marshalled but even with a better start it may have came to nothing as later in the run he would retire with radio issues. While pushed by team-mate Martin Wollanka, who was to set the fastest lap of all four rounds of qualifying, Coelho could cruise to his third TQ knowing that Bayer’s error had secured him the overall TQ irrespective of his own result in Q4. Despite his DNF, Bayer will start second ahead of Wollanka with Joern Neumann a surprise 4th after a strong P3 run in the final qualifier. Another key retirement of the final qualifier was Lee Martin popped a drive shaft after a big off, the lack of a result dropping him to fifth on the grid.
Taking what is effectively a home race for the Portuguese driver, his offroad & onroad race programs meaning he spends a lot of his time at the Hudy Arena, Coelho was happy to TQ and even more so when it was discovered he had done so with a bent chassis. With Bayer discovering it before the final qualifier but with not enough time to change, Coelho, who had earlier reported he was struggling to get the feeling he wanted from his steering servo, was pleased that actually a problem had been found. Commenting on the deciding qualifier the World Champion said, ‘the run was without mistake. I could drive easy after I saw Martin had flipped at the first jump’. Aiming to make it back to back wins for Xray at their world class facility having won last year as Top Qualifier he set out his plan for the final saying, ‘the track is super difficult and I will just try to keep it safe’.
‘I made a mistake at the beginning and tried to get back the time but made another mistake’, was how Bayer summed up Q4. Asked about his retirement from the heat he said, ‘I lost the radio. I could feel it was not right the lap before it completely stopped. We will check off everything and change somethings to be sure its ok for the final’. Winner of the event in 2014 and 2015, in terms of his XB4’s performance he said ‘the car is good’ adding ‘we’ll see how the race goes’.
Wollanka was pretty pleased with his run saying getting ‘offline a few times’ was what added to his 2-seconds deficit to Coelho. Having gone back in the changes he made to front flex on his XB4 he said ‘the car was pretty good and the lap times were there now’. Having pulled off the pass of last season at the Hudy Arena last year when he jumped over Coelho, the video of that race going viral and exposing RC Racing to millions of viewers, when reminded of it the Austrian laughed saying, ‘we’ll see what happens but on this track you need to wait’.
‘We improved the car every run’ was former Champion Neumann’s reaction to his P3 in the final qualifier. Running in the second fastest heat after a not so good seeding practice, the Serpent driver and one time 4WD master of racing on carpet said, ‘under braking I spun out once which cost me around 1-second but other than that it was fine’. The German plans to make further changes to his Orion powered SDX4 saying ‘we had too much steering before but now it understeers a little bit. On new tyres it is fine but on used it understeers more’. On his chances of breaking up an all Xray podium he said, ‘the three in front are a little bit faster but not always do the fastest win because they can also make mistakes’.
Lee Martin said, ‘we tried something different as it was make or break but it wasn’t good. It was two steps forward one step back’. Happy with certain characteristics of his RC Concept powered YZ-4, the 2WD Champion said, ‘its good through the corners so I’ll try to be there if the others blow out or panic’. Behind Martin, Hupo Honigl with line up 6th ahead of Kája Novotný, yesterday’s 2WD winner Michal Orlowski, Nico Schmid and Marc Rheinard.
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