Orlowski joins winners’ list at EOS finale

Michal Orlowski has joined the Euro Offroad Series winners list, the up & coming Polish talent wrapping up 2WD at the Season finale in Slovakia with a second win in A2 at the Hudy Racing Arena. Securing his first TQ start of the championship earlier in the day, the 13-year-old, who has been part of the EOS since its first race back in 2012, becomes only 6th different driver to stand on the top step of the podium.  His win over Lee Martin, this season’s champion winning A3, also marks the first win for British manufacturer Schumacher.  Making his debut for the Yokomo offroad team at the event, Marc Rheinard would complete the podium ahead of last year’s winner Martin Bayer.

‘I’m in shock’, that was Orlowski response to his first international race win.  Having secured his first Modified A-Main start in the Euro Touring Series two weeks ago, he said its been a good few weeks with everything starting to be coming good and off to Japan for the Worlds warm-up he hopes he can continue to build on today’s success.  A former champion of the ETS’ Hobby class aged just 8-years old, he said today’s win was particularly special as it was with a 2WD buggy, a Tamiya Madfighter, that he got his start in the hobby.  After a flawless A1, A2 looked to be going the same way until a mistake on the last lap, luckily Miguel Matias was on hand to quickly get him back on his way ahead of Martin.  Commenting on the mistake he said ‘I’m not sure what happened but it was my mistake, I closed my eyes when it happened’.  Describing his Cougar KF2 as ‘perfect’ having to make no changes throughout qualifying and the finals, he said that was down to hard work on the first day and input from Schumacher design engineer Tristram Neal. His first time to attend an EOS event, Orlowski said Neal’s input played a huge part in today’s result which sees him finish as this season’s overall championship runner up.

Although his key purpose of travelling to EOS finale is to try and do the title double by winning the 4WD title, Martin said while he always wants to win second today was ‘OK’.  Wrapping up his first EOS title with a win at the previous round in Austria, the Yokomo lead driver said they ‘didn’t quite hit the set-up on the head’.  He said if the track had had landing jumps like in Austria they would have been much stronger but they never got a handle on getting the YZ-2 landing on the flat and when they did it was at the cost of corner speed.  Missing a round of the British 1:8 Offroad Nationals to make this event he said hopefully tomorrow in 4WD that decision will prove to have been worth it.

Having been a B-Finalist at this event last year, Rheinard described his first outing with Yokomo as having gone ‘better than expected’.  His first outing with his new buggies, the reigning 1:12 World Champion said to finish on the podium was ‘not bad’ but said he needs more practice as his timing on the jumps was his biggest issue not the car.  Set to attend the World Championship Warm-up race at the Yatabe Arena early next month, the German said today’s result was an encouraging starting point to go into the astro turf based event with.

Having done the double at his Xray team’s home event last year, Bayer said after his bad start to the day it was always going to be hard to fight at the front.  ‘Overall happy with the performance’ of his XB2 prototype he said he couldn’t fault the car adding that in terms of speed it definitely had a podium if not a chance at the win in it.  Starting from 7th on the grid, the Czech driver found himself pushed out wide at the first hairpin of both opening mains making a good overall result even more difficult.  Enjoying a good A3, finishing second inbetween the two Yokomos, he said all considered fourth wasn’t the worst result.

Finishing up fifth overall on his EOS debut for Kyosho, Naoto Matsukura said he just didn’t have car this weekend. Winner of the season opener with Yokomo, he said his RB6 is quick as proven by a recent win at Yatabe, but the track this weekend was too different and they never found a set-up to suit.  Having topped 4WD practice, the 4WD World Championship runner-up said he was looking forward to tomorrow’s 4WD action adding the result would be a very different story to 2WD.

Ending his second ever EOS outing sixth, Ryan Cavalieri was at a loss to explain why having started off so well in the first A-Main that his buggy as ‘weird’ to drive in A2 & 3.  The factory Associated star said at the start of A1, him running second for a time, his B5M was ‘really on point’ but ‘then just lost it’.  Not driving the same way for the rest of the finals despite him looking over the car and finding nothing obvious standing out as a cause for the ‘weird handling’ the American said it was unfortunate as he was really starting to get to terms with the high traction conditions.  Behind him Schumacher’s Simon Moss would finish 7th with Kody Numedahl, former champion Joern Neumann and Round 1 Top Qualifier Carson Wernimont completing the final order.

View the complete event results here.

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