Orlowski snatches close Q2 in Slovakia

Michal Orlowski has taken the second round of qualifying at EOS Slovakia, a late push from the Schumacher driver paying reward helped by a bad last lap from Q1 Top Qualifier Neil Cragg. With Cragg the leader for most of the 5-minutes having seen off the pressure of Martin Bayer until the Xray driver had a small but costly error,  the Team Associated driver looked to have another TQ run in the bag but a rough last lap allowed both Orlowski, who just set his fastest lap of the heat on his penultimate lap, and Lee Martin to jump ahead. With the Top 3 very closely matched, the separation between the trio half a second, for Bayer, his mistake would leave him 4th as again he couldn’t deliver on his blistering seeding pace.

Commenting on his TQ run, Orlowski said, ‘In the end it went well.  I don’t know what I did but my first lap was slow and it put me on the back foot but towards the end I started to push hard because I knew the gap was very close and I got it on the last lap’.  The reigning champion who took the win at the Hudy Arena last year continued, ‘the car felt good and I had no major mistake but now I am not sure what to do for the next one, whether to go with used or new tyres.  I need to think about it’.

‘We are getting close’, was Lee Martin’s reaction to a much improved performance.  Changing both springs and the diff on his Yokomo to get more corner speed, he said, ‘It was better but I still need a bit of 180° corner speed and now in the high speed corners the front is washing out. It is a like an F1 car that has lost its front wing but we are getting closer to where we need to be at. I will just tweak a few things for the next one, nothing too crazy’.  On his own driving the British driver said, ‘I had two iffy laps that cost me half a second, Orlowski had bad laps at the start, me in the middle and then Neil at the end, we’re all pretty close’.

‘That was bloody close’ was how Cragg summed up Q2.  The ETS Daun winner continued, ‘It was a dialed run until the last lap when I had a bobble which cost me the TQ’.  Leading away the heat for the second qualifier, the Brit said, ‘I knew I had to start fast as Bayer was going to come out swinging.  I stayed ahead and was pretty happy about that’.  Looking to Q3 he concluded, ‘The car is pretty dialed and the driver is 99% there’.

Bayer said, ‘I tried to make super luck but ended up with bad luck’.  He continued, ‘I made a stupid mistake at the double single before the straight and it cost me two & a half seconds. It was only a tiny small mistake (his car landing inside the piping) but it cost me a lot’.  With two rounds of qualifying remaining to make up for his errors in his opening two attempts, the Xray Offroad team manager said, ‘the speed is there and the car is good. I just need to calm things down and do nothing crazy’.  Behind Bayer, EOS Poland podium finisher Daniel Kobbevik completed the Top 5.

View complete event results here.

View the event image gallery here.