Wollanka tops 2WD seeding at Nurburgring

Martin Wollanka will be the top seed for tomorrow’s 2WD qualifying at the opening round of the Euro Offroad Series at the Nurburgring.  The Xray driver would be the only driver to complete 3-consecutive laps in 58-seconds when he went fastest in the final round of practice outpacing reigning champion Lee Martin by 2/10ths.  Having set the pace in the first of the two controlled practices runs, Michal Orlowski would fail to improve on his time which was still good enough for third.  Making the biggest improvement of CP2, Marc Rheinard would jump from 7th in the first round to post P4 as the other three drivers who made up the Top 6 in the first practice were unable to better their times.

While Wollanka would improve his pace by 2/10ths per lap, the Austrian was quick to admit that after a diff oil change on his XB2 for the final practice while it was faster it had left it ‘not so good for 5-minutes’.  Making the car ‘more aggressive’, he said it was ‘maybe too much’ adding the car was now ‘not as easy to drive’.  Set to carry the No.1 in the top heat of the 137 strong 2WD entry tomorrow, last year’s podium finisher concluded, ‘I need something in between these two (diff set-ups)’.

Improving his pace by 2/10ths over the 3-laps, Martin was pleased with his pace feeling he has a good car for the 5-minutes.  The British driver, who kicked off his successful title defence here last year with victory, said, ‘I started out the run as a 5-minute qualifier but started to push at the end which caused a few mistakes.  My three laps were when I wasn’t trying anything crazy for quick laps so I think we are looking good for qualifying’.

While Orlowski would be half a second off his opening CP pace, the Schumacher driver said ‘the car felt better but I just didn’t get three laps’.  Able to match his fastest lap time of CP1, the Polish teenager added, ‘I think the 5-minute pace is there’. Changing to a lighter diff oil for CP2, he said this made the car slightly slower in the corners and with his engineer Tristram Neal using CP2 to run 10K oil in the diff of his own car, Orlowski will on his advice do the same for Q1.

‘Not too bad’ was how Rheinard summed up practice.  The Yokomo driver said the big thing for him is he is ‘still trying to learn the track a bit’.  Pleased with how his YZ-2CA is working, the multiple onroad World Champion is having trouble with his timing on the jumps and needs to improve his landings.   He is also having problems at the Team Associated step-up step-down, saying ‘I’m still shit there’. The German said he keeps dropping the noise of the car on the step down instead of using the power to launch the car off it.

Trying a front shock oil/spring change for CP2 but fitting a new set of the Schumacher hand out tyres, Neil Cragg said his B6 was ‘not quite there’.  The former World Champion who dropped to P5 after being unable to better his opening time admitted he also ‘didn’t drive very good’.  While his fastest lap was good he said there was ‘just not enough of them’ and for qualifying they need to ‘go in between the two set-ups for the first one’.  Behind Cragg, Xray’s Hupo Honigl would drop to sixth followed by Joona Haatanen with an improvement from Bruno Coelho leaving the 4WD Champion P8 and in the top heat along with Christopher Krapp and Nico Risser.

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