Coelho takes opening qualifier at EOS Finale

Bruno Coelho has claimed the opening 2WD qualifier at the Euro Offroad Series Season finale at ERT Steyregg in Austria.  A new venue on the Season #8 calendar, the difficult astro turf track saw the Xray driver top the first of the four qualifiers by over 3-seconds from Team Associated’s Joona Haatanen who, after struggling in practice, was running in the second fastest heat.  Obviously finding some new motivation from racing at home, Hupo Honigl would complete the Top 3 ahead of Xray team-mate Daniel Kobbevik who just missed out on a 12-lap run.  For already crowned 2WD Champion Michal Orlowski it wasn’t a strong start to the event as his run was filled with errors resulting in a P7 for Q1.

Commenting on his TQ run, Coelho said, ‘the first few laps I was trying to drive safe’.  After a wet start to the day which had drivers running the silver compound of Schumacher’s handout tyre, he continued, ‘In the warm-up I was flipping everywhere as it was the first time on yellow (compound) tyres.  By the third lap I was in first and Hupo was second so I just watched his pace’.  Coming into the event fresh from winning another European Touring Car Championship title,  the Portuguese described the track as ‘the most difficult track I have been to’, explaining, ‘the hills create a lot of optical illusions and you think the car is a certain way on the track but its not’.  On his XB2 he said, ‘the car is working very good and we now have a wet car and and dry car, so we are good for any conditions. Well we think so’.  Unfortunately Saturday and Sunday’s weather is showing plenty of wet conditions.

‘Much better than practice’, was Haatanen reaction when asked how he felt Q1 had gone.  Kicking off the current EOS season with his first ever win, the Finn said, ‘the car was way too soft in practice so I looked up my Arena 33 set-up from last year and put it on for qualifying.  The car was much better and easier to drive. It doesn’t want to flip over anymore’.  Describing the 5-minute qualifier as ‘a bit safe to make sure of a good first run’ he said ‘I’m happy with the result as practice didn’t go so good and I think I will drive similar for the next one’.

Honigl said, ‘It was a good run. At least I had no mistakes but I am not used to driving up at the front again’.  The former series race winner continued, ‘I was shaking like a beginner.  The car could do better but we had the driver issue.  Hopefully I can improve that for the next one’.

Battling for an overall Top 3 in the final championship standings, Kobbevik said his opening effort had ‘just too many mistakes’.  Having made big changes to his Xray between the final seeding run and Q1 he said the car felt more edgy and it took him time to get used to it.  Feeling the new set-up is better adding ‘I like it’, the young Norwegian will leave car the same and instead try to build confidence in his driving.

‘I don’t know’ was Orlowski reply when question about Q1.  The Pole continued, ‘I had too many mistakes and crashes but the car felt good and had the pace’.  Admitting conditions were now more edgy as the grip comes up, he plans to make a small front end change to his Cougar Laydown adding, ‘hopefully it will be better as the overall feeling with the car is very good’.

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