Orlowski again in Q2

Michal Orlowski continued his reign in Poland again posting a TQ run in the second round of qualifying at EOS Poland.  The Schumacher driver will suffer a similar mistake to that he had at the wall section in Q1 but again was able to recover to top the heat by 1.8 seconds from Neil Cragg.  An impressive run from Joern Neumann would net the former champion a P3 for the round while Bruno Coelho would also be more competitive to go fourth fastest ahead of reigning champion Lee Martin.  Again the fastest man on the track posting the fastest lap, commenting on his TQ run Orlowski said, ‘Again I had a mistake after the wall but the other guys had some errors which allowed me to recover to get another TQ’.  Able to secure the overall TQ for his home race in Q3, he concluded, ‘I’ll just try not to crash this time’.

Improving on a P6 to set the second fastest time, Cragg said, ‘I’m happy with second but we still need to find a few tenths’.  The Team Associated driver continued, ‘It was a pretty clean run and the car was alright but it’s a little too safe.  It’s consistent but not fast enough’.  Suffering a locked diff in Q1, he said the new diff worked fine and changing to a different battery pack he said the power was also improved adding however he ‘might up the timing a few clicks (for the next one)’.  Asked what changes he planned for his B6 to find time he replied, ‘some of the others (team-mates) cars look good in certain places so I think we’ll get together and brainstorm some ideas’.

Asked where he pulled his much improved pace from Neumann replied, ‘out of nowhere’.  The Serpent driver said they completely changed the set-up on his SDX2 which he said now is more like the set-up they run on the 4WD.  The German said, ‘before I had to drive careful but now I can push car much harder’.   For Q3 he said he hopes he can maintain his new form planning to keep all the same as he tries to lock himself into the A-Main .  If successful, he said then they would use the fourth & final qualifier to try further changes to the set-up.

After struggling with a ‘difficult to drive’ car in Q1 that led to ‘too many mistakes’, Coelho said changes to his set-up had made his XB2 much easier to drive.  The Portuguese ace said he ‘still had 2 mistakes’ but overall it was a ‘much better’ qualifier.  Planning to leave the car unchanged for the penultimate round he said his aim was to make no mistakes pointing out on the time sheets that his Q2 mistakes had cost him 4-seconds.

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