Haatanen claims maiden EOS TQ
Joona Haatanen has claimed his maiden TQ of the Euro Offroad Series, the up & coming star of the championship securing the top spot for tomorrow’s 2WD A-Main at Arena33. Having taken the opening two rounds of qualifying, the Team Associated driver could only be denied his first pole position by Yokomo’s Lee Martin who had topped Q3. In the end however Martin, who had the advantage of the fastest TQ time, couldn’t get it done with Bruno Coelho finally delivering on his fast pace to take the fourth & final qualifier, making Haatanen the Top Qualifier and demoting Martin to third on the grid.
With the final qualifier proving his worst of the day a delighted Haatanen, said, ‘the car was good but I was just too tired’. A long 13 plus hour day at the track for the 14-year-old, he said, ‘It is good to be starting first here because the layout will make it very hard to overtake. Having no one in front I just to plan on driving my own race and see what happens. The pressure is on them to pass me’. In terms of his Reedy powered B6 he said, ‘the car is really good so I will stay the same. I don’t want to take any risks by changing it’. Opting to use his first set of tyres for a third time in Q3, getting a P3 despite them being passed their best, Haatanen has the added bonus of having two good sets of tyres at his disposal should the finals go to A3.
‘Finally no mistakes, like I said before the car is amazing’, was how Coelho reacted to capping off the day with a TQ run. The Xray driver added, ‘my focus was to drive without mistake but when I was behind Lee (Martin) and because the game was on for 2nd (on the grid) I had to force things’. He continued, ‘when he flipped I just tried to save the position but I couldn’t relax too much because it was going to come down to time’. While Joakim Nicolaisen would mount a credible challenge before a late error, Coelho would go on to take the TQ bettering Martin’s previous fastest time by 8/10ths of second. Looking to the finals he said, ‘there are no points to overtake so I’ll just have to wait for a mistake by Joona’.
Ending the deciding qualifier with a P4, Martin said, ‘I crashed on the easy ones’. He continued, ‘On the world’s worst table top I jumped into the kicker and flipped, it was game over after that’. While his YZ2 ‘felt ok’, the reigning champion said ‘it’s still rolling too much and we’ll have to try something different for tomorrow’. Asked about his plan of attack for the finals he replied, ‘I’m going to sit back and see what happens but starting third might not be a bad thing’. The only real potential challenger to current championship leader Michal Orlowski’s quest for a first EOS title, he said, ‘it would have been nice to get the TQ point but its going to be crazy racing in the finals so its still all to play for’. Martin’s team-mate Marc Rheinard came into the weekend as the other title challenge to Orlowski but ending up as the BQ at his home race his title hopes are now over.
Behind Martin, Nicolaisen has capped off an impressive return to the EOS following his military service to qualify 4th on the grid. The Team Associated driver lines up ahead of his team-mate Neil Cragg who concluded qualifying with a P6. Having been the dominant force in 2WD at the last two rounds of the EOS, Orlowski put the entire Schumacher team through an intense end to the day as he went up and down the order on the time screen. With a previous best of a P6 in the second qualifier after a DNF in the first, he would somehow, despite putting his LRP powered KC on it roof a number of times, salvage a 5th for the round which would put him into the main event where he will carry the number 8.
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Martin finally hits the top in Q3
Having topped the times in all three rounds of practice at the Euro Offroad Series this morning, Lee Martin finally posted a TQ run in the third qualifier at Arena33. Kicking off qualifying with an error on his opening lap but managing to salvage a P2 for the round, on his second attempt further errors left him with a P4. Improving his car for the penultimate heat, he would set a new fastest qualifying time to push the decision of Top Qualifier in Germany out to the final round of qualifying. With Joona Haatanen having taken the opening two qualifiers, only Martin can deny the Team Associated teenager his first overall TQ of the EOS but in order to achieve this the former Champion must top Q4. With Haatanen third in the penultimate round, it was early pace setter Bruno Coelho who would finish second, a roll half way through the heat ending his chances of the overall TQ.
Making a number of changes to his RC Concept powered YZ2 and finding the half second he lost between practice and the first two qualifiers, Martin said ‘it all worked a bit better now’. Moving the battery position and changing his front shock oil he also used a different set of tyres but added, ‘I don’t know if that (the new set of tyres) helped’. Describing his car as ‘nice in the end’, he said ‘now I have just got to win the last round’. With the potential to end up first, second or third on the grid he added, ‘I’d like the extra point (for the TQ) but I don’t think it is critical for the win on the track so the plan is try not be an idiot’. With the fastest qualifying time, this is one less pressure on him as if he can get to the top of the time sheets he can control his pace as he already holds the tie-breaker with his quicker time.
Reacting to having again been on the TQ pace only to lose it to another error, Coelho said ‘I can’t say it was my mistake this time. The car jumped crazy and I was not able to correct it in the air so it landed wrong and rolled. It was quite strange.’ The 4WD Champion & current points leader, continued, ‘the car has been amazing all day, I’m just driving bad on this track’. Openly not comfortable with 2WD, he said ‘we have worked a lot on 2WD and I have felt it working as good as it is here, its just my driving that needs to get better now’. Team-mate Martin Bayer would take his similar Hobbywing powered example of the XB2 to fifth for the round.
Making a last minute decision to continue with his first set of tyres for a third run, Haatanen said they left the car ‘too loose’ leading to ‘a few mistakes’. Pleased to be able to recover for a Top 3 for the round despite the tyre being ‘now almost slicks’, he said the strategy should stand to him come the finals as he will have two good sets of tyres at his disposal with most of his rivals having started to run their second set of qualifying tyres. For team-mate Neil Cragg, the round would net a P8. The EOS Poland podium finisher said, ‘I thought it was a decent run but in the end it was not quite there’. He added the ‘car felt pretty dialled but I had to dodge a few cars because I’m not running in the top heat’. Karri Salmela would make it three B6 in the Top 6 with his best run so far setting the 6th fastest time.
Setting his first competitive run with a P4 for the round Marc Rheinard said, ‘I need more practice on this layout’. Winner of the season opener at the Nurburgring, the Yokomo driver said, ‘this time I just tried to get a clean run. I struggled a bit in the middle of the run but got back into a rhythm for the end. I still crashed but it was a lot better than before’. Currently sitting in a B-Main position he said ‘this track is all about driving so I’ll try again for a clean run and hopefully that will be enough for the A-Main’.
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Chassis Focus – Michal Orlowski
Chassis: Schumacher KC
Motor: LRP X20 6.5T
ESC: LRP FlowX
Batteries: LRP LCG P5 4000mAh
Radio/Servo: Sanwa
Tires: Schumacher (handout)
Body: Kit
Remarks – Championship leader Michal Orlwoski is running the latest KC 2wd buggy from Schumacher with a setup that started as a mic between that used in Poland and Slovakia. Need to make the car less aggressive and more stable that have made a number of changes including adding weight to the car, runninf harder front shock oil and adjusting the rear wheelbase and the Polish driver believes they are almost there.
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Chassis Focus – Joona Haatanen
Chassis: Team Associated B6
Motor: Reedy Sonic 6.5T
ESC: Reedy Blackbox
Batteries: Reedy 3600mAh
Radio/Servo: Sanwa/Reedy
Tires: Schumacher (handout)
Body: JConcepts S2
Remarks – Young Finnish ace Joona Haatanen has taken the opening two rounds of qualifying here at Arena33 with his Reedy powered Team Associated B6. Using the same setup from the previous round of the EOS, they have made a number of tweaks including changing the front and rear shock pistons, a slight front roll centre change and disconnecting the front and rear anti-roll bars in an effort to calm the car down and make it easier to drive on such a difficult track.
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Haatanen heads Associated 1-2 with another TQ run
Joona Haatanen backed up his Q1 TQ by again topping the times in the second round of qualifying at the Euro Offroad Series in Germany. The up & coming Finnish talent would lead a Team Associated 1-2 at Arena33 as elder team-mate Neil Cragg managed to set the second fastest time despite running in the second quickest heat. Behind the two B6s it was Martin Bayer who was best of the rest, the Xray driver some 5-seconds off Haatanen’s TQ pace. With top seed Lee Martin getting a P4 for the round ahead of Hupo Honigl, for championship leader Michal Orlowski the second round of qualifying proving to be the Pole’s highest placing on the time sheets so far but the winner of the last two EOS encounters has yet to get to terms with the challenging track layout.
Quashing any doubt that he inherited the first TQ after a mistake from Bruno Coelho, Haatanen summed up his Q2 performance by saying ‘my time was better’. Suffering a 3-second roll as the heat approached the final minute, the error caused by too much throttle on the landing of the centre double, Haatanen added that apart from this one error he felt overall he drove a better heat second time around. Looking to Q3, when he could claim his first overall EOS TQ honours, he said the plan was to try to repeat his early runs and in terms of his car the only thing he would be doing was to fit a new set of tyres.
‘We are getting somewhere now’, joking, ‘my mechanic was holding me back’, was Craig’s reaction to a much improved run. 10th fastest in Q1, the former World Champion said having copied 80% of Haatanen’s set-up for Q1 after his young team-mate TQ’d he got mechanic Craig Drescher to completely copy it for the second attempt. Describing the set-up as ‘maybe a little safe’ he admitted it was ‘maybe not such a bad thing for this track’. Happy to run the car unchanged for Q3, Drescher however thinks his driver could do with more power and plans to give the LRP powered B6 more top end power as well as tightening the slipper. Drescher feels while they have a safe qualifying car from watching his driver he thinks as it is now it will be swallowed up by the pack in the finals.
With Coelho’s challenge ended by a ‘mistake in the same place as before’, Bayer put his P3 down to the fact he ‘crashed less than the others’. The former EOS race winner continued, ‘everyone is crashing so much you don’t need to be fastest to be on top’. Suffering three mistakes himself, he said, ‘the speed is there because if I look at my best lap time I’m also in the Top 3’. He concluded, ‘its all about not driving like a monkey’.
‘The car was nervous at the start again. It is not landing great on the jumps’ was how Martin summed his run to fourth. The Yokomo driver continued, ‘the car was good this morning and now it has dropped half a second. I’m not sure what is going on’. Planning to ‘try a few things’ including fitting a new set of tyres for Q3, he added, ‘it seems the tyre wear is back which is strange for a track with not many corners’. He concluded, ‘I think tyre games are going to come into it’.
Having ‘crashed like a monkey’ in Q1, Hupo Honigl would redeem himself with a P5 run. The Austrian said, ‘this time I tried to get a clean run. I was not fast but it was clean which is super difficult on this track’. Planning the same approach for Q3, he said on this track layout the car set-up was not key to a good result but just keeping errors to a minimum.
With a DNF in Q1 after he jumped too short resulting in a rear camber link popping off his Schumacher, Orlowski was pleased to register some points but the 15-year-old said ‘again I made too many errors’. While his car is ‘pretty good’, he said it is unpredictable and in an attempt to improve this they will add weight for the next heat. Used to running the car light he said hopefully the heavier car will be more stable allowing him to ‘push harder and make a good result’.
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