Flawless drive for Neumann in opening 4wd final
Jorn Neumann has continued to stamp his authority on the 4wd portion of the 5th round of the Euro Offroad Series here at the Arena33 after he withstood intense pressure in A1 from his team mate Michal Orlowski for the entire 5 minutes. Bruno Coelho, who was struggling with the very high traction ended the race in 3rd, while Wesley van Helmond and Daniel Kobbevik completed the top half of the field. ‘It was good, a very clean run’, was how Neumann described the first final, continuing ‘it was very smooth from the first lap to the last’. Able to maintain the same gap back to Orlowski, the German was very happy with his car and will ‘try to do the same again’ in A2.
Quick to admit that ‘Jorn drove amazing’, Orlowski said there was no chance to pass as both cars had the same pace from the start to the finish. Mentioning that not only is the traction even higher than yesterday but there are more bumps now due to the rain, making conditions ‘tougher and tougher’. Only planning to refresh his diffs for A2 he will consult with his team about perhaps making a small change.
Bruno Coelho was another to be struggling with the grip levels and early on, after his car was on 2 wheels in most corners, decided to just ‘try and salvage a result’. The former EOS Champion was quickly gapped by the leading pair and so had a lonely race in 3rd. For A2 he will go through his XB4 and check that they have switched back all the settings they used in qualifying yesterday, suspecting they may have forgotten something after they changed the car for the wet conditions this morning.
Wesley van Helmond, who took 4th, said the result was ‘good, but there was something wrong with my car’, elaborating by telling us that he was still running some settings on his car that they used on the morning’s Q4 and this caused his Schumacher to be very hard to drive. Unable to push at all for fear of traction rolling, the Dutchman will make some changes so that he can be more aggressive, saying ‘it will be better the next one’. Daniel Kobbevik was 5th, almost taking fourth in the drag race to the line on the last lap, while Joona Haatanen had a difficult race to take 6th.
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Jorn Neumann confirmed as 4wd Top Qualifier
Confirming what we expected last night, Jorn Neumann is the top qualifier for 4wd here at the EOS Rd5 in Germany, the final round of qualifying run on an almost dry track for the fastest heat. The round was taken by Michal Orlowski, who lead home a Schumacher 1-2-3 for the round with Jorn in 2nd and Wesley van Helmond in 3rd but the Polish driver’s time was 18 seconds slower than the fastest time of Neumann from Q1 so on tie-break the German will once again start from pole as he had done here 12 months previous. Bruno Coelho, who had lead the heat until a mistake was 4th for the round and will start 3rd on the grid with Joona Haatanen setting off 5th. ‘Its nice to be the TQ’ said a pleased looking Neumann, continuing ‘the track dried quickly and with the silver compound tires it was too aggressive to driver’. With the round declared wet, drivers had to run the silver wet compound but the first round of finals will be declared dry and so the drivers will go back to the standard yellow compound. For the final Jorn plans to leave his car as is, saying that the tires should fix any of the issues they experienced in Q4.
Winner here last year, Orlowski had not expected the track to dry so fast and looking at the weather forecast yesterday also wasn’t expecting to run the finals in the dry and so will now work hard to switch the car’s settings back for dry conditions. Feeling that the rain last night washed away the dust, the track has even more traction than yesterday. With the top 3 the same as here last year at the Arena33, Michal hopes for a repeat of that race in which he and Jorn broke away from Coelho so they can have a battle amongst themselves, concluding by saying ‘Anything can happen, as we saw in A3 of 2wd yesterday you need to be there when something happens’.
Bruno Coelho will start from 3rd, the Xray driver slight frustrated at his last qualifier, having lead it following some mistakes by the Schumacher pairing only to traction roll himself. The Portuguese driver saying that when he was pushing his car early in the heat he didn’t have any problems with traction roll, but once in front he backed it off slightly and that was when it flipped. Preparing the final, the former WC said ‘the final is on and anything can happen’.
Starting 4th on his debut with the new Associated B74, Joona Haatanen was content with his grid spot simply saying ‘that’s pretty good’. Having a very difficult last run, the Finnish driver didn’t cut the outer row of pins on his handout tires and so it was very aggressive and like most of the front runners were caught out by the drier than expected conditions and admitted that his car was setup incorrectly. For the finals he will revert to his Q3 setup and cut the pins on his tires aiming to make the podium saying ‘I have the pace of the top 3, I just need to drive smart’. Wesley van Helmond will start 5th, continuing his good form this weekend and making it 3 Schumachers in the top 5. Daniel Kobbevik qualified in 6th, with fellow Xray drivers Adam Izsay, Martin Bayer and Hupo Honigl covering 7th to 9th, with the final spot going to Polish driver Bartlomiej Zambrzycki who makes his first A-main appearance after coming close so many times.
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Q3 Update
Michal Orlowski has taken the 3rd round of qualifying in 4wd at the Euro Offroad Series in Germany, just as light rain started to fall near the end of the heat. The rain got much heavier just as the fourth round started and so it was decided to postpone the final round until first thing in the morning. Jorn Neumann took 2nd but with the track now wet its going to be a difficult task for team mate Orlowski to take the round tomorrow morning in a faster time than the German’s Q1 time and so it is all but guaranteed that Neumann will start from pole. Bruno Coelho was 3rd, just 5/100ths behind Jorn, having run the fastest lap of the heat, while Joona Haatanen took 4th, the track running 2 seconds a lap slower by the end of heat as the track took on more water.
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Neumann once again fastest in Q2
Jorn Neumann has backed up his first round TQ with another in the second qualifier, the margin much smaller this time around due to most of the front runners, including the German himself, making a number of mistakes. Joona Haatanen took 2nd with the all new Associated B74 with Daniel Kobbevik heading home Michal Orlowski who again had a number of errors, despite being the fastest on outright pace, the top 4 covered by less than a second. Bruno Coelho would take 5th ahead of Hupo Honigl with Wesley van Helmond ending up in 7th. Admitting to be a big fan of Astro turf, compared to carpet, due to its forgiving nature in terms of setup, Jorn described his race saying ‘It started good with Bruno pushing very hard, then he made a mistake, I then had a comfortable lead and then I crashed’, before saying ‘then things got interesting’. Despite it being very close at the end and the lead group switching positions throughout, the German could take the round. ‘On lap times the top 3 are very close’ continuing by saying that for Q3 they will make some adjustments based on the temperature of the track which is expected to cool and lose grip as qualifying runs into the evening.
‘Much better, we tried a bunch of things’ was how Joona described his run to 2nd, the Finnish teenager slowly coming to terms with his new car, having never run on astro with it before. Changing the gearbox as well as going harder in oils which improved it a lot, Joona says the main characteristic of the new car is that it is much easier to drive and faster, saying there is no need to be punched the whole time to achieve the same results. Remarking that the car also seems to run a lot freer Joona only plans a small change to the rear of the car for Q3, ending by saying ‘it’s looking good’.
Kobbevik was top Xray for the round, the Norwegian driver pleased with his pace saying ‘it was a good one, I was not so fast but consistent’. Making a lot of mistakes on his way to 7th in Q1, he said he managed to eliminate a lot of those mistakes in his Q2 run. Not sure about what to change for Q3, Daniel said ‘my car is now good but not super fast’.
Michal Orlowski is having a tougher time than usual, admitting that while his car is ‘really good’ with the grip having come up a lot, it is not comfortable to drive. Saying he needs to just make less mistakes, he was pleased that the team was doing so well with Jorn leading the way showing the pace of their car.
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