Cragg Top Qualifier at EOS Daun

Neil Cragg is the 2WD Top Qualifier at Round 2 of the Euro Offroad Series in Germany.  The Team Associated driver claimed his second EOS career TQ after topping 2 of the 4 qualifiers in Daun and with a little help from fellow British driver Lee Martin who took a surprise TQ from Michal Orlowski in the final round.  With only Orlowski able to deny Cragg a pole start for this afternoon’s finals, Cragg looked to have everything under control but with a minute to go a mistake dropped him off the TQ pace with Martin and Orlowski taking up the battle.  With his Q3 TQ time the fastest, Orlowski had the tie break advantage if he could top Q4 and he would push Martin hard for it however with both drivers crashing on their final laps Martin would hang on to take it by half a second.  With Orlowski set to start 2nd, Martin’s TQ bumps the Yokomo driver up to 3rd.  Championship leader Bruno Coelho would complete the Top 3 behind them, the improved result putting him 5th on the grid behind Xray team-mate Martin Bayer.

His first TQ since the season finale of the EOS two years ago when the entire factory Associated team came to the Nurburgring for the debut of the B6 platform with Ryan Cavalieri going on to take the win, Cragg said, ‘I’m really happy with the TQ’.  He continued that Q4 was ‘a really good run for 4-minutes until I had a bobble at the end of the straight and it unravelled from there’.  Ending up 5th fastest, he continued, ‘the car is really good so we’ll see what we can do in the finals.  We’ll just check the shocks for the finals and leave the set-up as it is because it’s running really well’.

Summing up his final qualifying attempt, Orlowski said, ‘It was OK.  I was on new tyres so the car was a bit edgy and that led me to have a few bobbles’.  The reigning champion continued, ‘I tried to catch Lee and it was pretty close in the end but now I have good tyres for the final and the car feels really good’.  Asked about racing in the finals, the Pole said, ‘the start will be tricky because the table top after the wall is difficult’.

‘Back in the game’ was Martin’s reaction to his TQ run, the European Champion adding, ‘I could have done it last night too but I messed up’.  Raising the rear roll centre and adding more rear toe-in, he said the car was better but he still has a problem with losing drive near the end of the heat.  Having fitted all new slipper parts, he is now thinking maybe the diff gets too warm.  Asked about the final he replied, ‘Well I bumped myself into a good position to actually do something’.

Having a tough final qualifier, Bayer said, ‘for the last one I tried something different with the set-up to try make the car quicker in the 180 degree corners but it was not good and I will go back’.  He continued, ‘I will look for some luck in the final.  The track is quite a mix so it could be interesting and the guy from the back could still win’.

Enduring a contrasting weekend so far to the season opener when he took the TQ and win in dominant style in Poland, Coelho said, ‘This track is very difficult. I only had one mistake, I rolled at the table top, but it cost me a few seconds’.  Concluding qualifying with his first Top 3 run, he continued, ‘the start will for sure be a mess. Starting 5th on this track I could finish last or first. It’s so easy to make mistakes’.

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Orlowski takes Q3 at EOS

Michal Orlowski has TQ’d the third round of 2WD qualifying at Round 2 of the Euro Offroad Series in Germany.  The Schumacher driver ended Neil Cragg’s run of topping the time sheets at the new Daun venue as he topped the opening run of Day 2 from the Team Associated driver.  With Orlowski fastest by 2.6-seconds, his TQ time the quickest so far, things were much closer behind him with Cragg only 6/100ths up on Martin Bayer who in turn was 3/10ths quicker than his Xray team-mate Bruno Coelho.

‘It didn’t start very good, I was sleepy the first couple of laps’, was how Orlowski summed up his TQ run.  Having raced at the Reedy Race of Champions in California last weekend the Polish teenager says he is struggling with jet lag.  Starting the qualifier directly behind Cragg, once he woke up he said, ‘I just put my head down to catch up to Neil.  Then he had a mistake and I had a good gap, so for the last couple of laps I drove carefully’.  Suffering from crashes and traffic in the opening qualifier, while the second one was a better attempt he said a nap before the late evening qualifier meant he wasn’t fully on his game.  In terms of his car he said, ‘the cars feels good, it’s the same set-up as we ran in practice’.

Having topped seeding and the opening 2 qualifiers making it a perfect first day, Cragg said, ‘I got a little tight in the middle of the heat and clipped a few things but 2nd is still a good result’.  An early start to the day, the former World Champion continued, ‘It not too bad for this hour of the morning.  The car is still good and we are still competitive.  We’ll just rotate the tyres for the last one’.  With the large track proving challenging to all drivers with mistakes common, Cragg felt in Q3 he was a lot better over the jump after the banked corner, a section that has been catching out a lot of drivers.

Despite still being sick, joking he is taking medication like eating sweets, Bayer was very happy with his run to P3.  The Czech driver said, ‘the run was good. I had no mistakes.  It was a very close ending with 3-cars on the same second.  The finals will be very interesting’.  Sitting third in the qualification ranking he added, ‘I have been in the Top 4 in all 3 runs so I am very happy with my consistency’.

For team-mate Coelho, the weekend has so far been a tough one for the Round 1 dominator.  While P4 in Q3 would be his best run so far the Portuguese driver is struggling to produce a clean run.  Agreeing the track is challenging he said, ‘It was going very good at the beginning but I had a mistake and lost 3-seconds.  The car is good, I just need to try and make no mistakes’.

Posting another P5 time, Yokomo’s Lee Martin said his car is ‘still lacking corner speed’.  Also suffering a ‘couple of mistakes’, he continued, ‘I have a 5, 5 & a 6 so it’s time to try something now’.  Changing the car set-up each round he said, ‘we have been making baby steps with the changes but now it’s time to make a bigger step.  It a progression of what we have been doing but just much bigger’.  He also plans to run a new set of tyres joking its ‘wheelie time’.  Behind Martin, team-mate Marc Rheinard would complete the Top 6.

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Cragg again in Q2

Neil Cragg has capped off a perfect Day 1 of the Euro Offroad Series in Germany, the Team Associated driver backing up his TQ run in the opening 2WD qualifier with another fastest time in the second round.  The result leaves the British driver the overnight TQ holder ahead of Schumacher’s Michal Orlowski, the reigning champion having a much better second attempt to stop the clock in the second fastest time.  Enjoying a marked improvement on his first round HB Racing’s David Ronnefalk would complete the Q2 Top 3 ahead of Martin Bayer who sits P3 overnight.  For championship leader Bruno Coelho it was another tough round. Getting his Xray stuck up on the wall, the Xray driver would recover from that running a Top 3 position but on the last lap he would go to tight in the corner table top and get stuck dropping him down the order.  With an overnight reseeding of the heats, he just managed to remain in the top heat sitting 10th in the ranking.

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Cragg TQs opening qualifier at EOS Daun

Neil Cragg has TQ’d the opening round of 2WD qualifying at the Euro Offroad Series in Daun, Germany.  Having topped seeding earlier in the day, the Team Associated driver took the first of the four qualifiers ahead of Xray’s Martin Bayer and the Schumacher of Joern Neumann, all three drivers putting their results down to making less mistakes than their rivals.  Championship leader Bruno Coelho who had the fastest car on the track set the early pace but his run was filled with errors and it was a similar story for reigning champion Michal Orlwoski with them finishing 10th and 6th fastest respectively.

‘If a young driver was driving my car he’d do real damage’, joked Cragg after his TQ run.  A former EOS Top Qualifier but yet to win an event, the former World Champion continued, ‘I’m pretty pleased. It is always hard going from 4WD back to 2WD but the car is going good.  I knew there was going to be a lot of crashes especially at the jump after the banked corner. It’s really hard to get the down ramp right and it caught out a lot of guys but I seemed to be pretty good through there.  I just tried to keep the head and stay cool and it got me the TQ’.  Not planning any changes to his B6 for Q2, the final run of the day, he concluded, ‘It is not the fastest out there but for now it’s a pretty good start’.

Having had a resurgent start to the new season of EOS finishing runner-up to team-mate Coelho in both buggy classes, Bayer described his P2 as ‘OK’.  The Czech native continued, ‘all week I have been pretty sick and I feel pretty low in power.  I didn’t sleep so I’m struggling’.  Setting the TQ pace for a time he would have ‘a stupid mistake’ at the corner table top and with ‘the marshal very far away (I) lost a lot of time so I am very happy to get second’.  Asked about his car set-up, he said, ‘The car is good, I just don’t feel right. I didn’t change it since the start.’

‘It was money, like the Americans call it’, was how Neumann summed up his opening qualifier.  Running in the second fastest heat having struggled to get in two strong consecutive seeding laps, the former Champion said, ‘I was not so fast, I just didn’t crash’.  Running the car unchanged from the final practice, for the second qualifier the German will run a softer diff saying, ‘in the tight corers I need more rotation’.

Setting the fourth fastest time, Hupo Honigl said, ‘It’s a really good start. I haven’t been up there in a long time’.  The former race winner put his improvement down to a car change.  ‘I changed my car to my spare car and it was a lot faster.  My race car felt amazing to drive in practice but was super slow’.  With the two Xray’s set-up 95% the same, the Austrian said, ‘It feels the same to drive but it is a lot quicker. I have no idea why’.

Completing the Top 5 Lee Martin was annoyed with himself after having a ‘huge crash on the second lap’.  Rolling over his Yokomo he said it cost him 4-seconds otherwise it was an ok run.  In terms of his car, the World Championship podium finisher said, ‘We need to find a little more corner speed.  The best lap is not quite as good as Michal or Bruno but I know if I can do a decent run we should be ok’.

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Orlowski quickest in 4WD practice

Michal Orlowski was quickest over the three rounds of 4WD practice for the second round of the Euro Offroad Series in Germany.  Having posted the second fastest time in 2WD practice behind Neil Cragg, the Schumacher driver topped reigning champion Bruno Coelho over 2-consecutive laps in the final round.  Behind them, failing to better their times from the opening seeding round, David Ronnefalk and Lee Martin made it a similar story to 2WD with four different manufacturers at the top of times.  Making his EOS debut as a Schumacher driver, multiple former Champion Joern Neumann was 5th fastest.

Summing up his performance Orlowski said, ‘It didn’t start off well.  I broke in the first one on the first lap. I had no rear drive and stopped after a lap’.  He continued, ‘We made small changes to the car for the last practice.  We went to a shorter rear link for more rotation and it felt really good. I think we are looking good for qualifying’.

‘Very good I think’, was Coelho’s reply when asked how 4WD practice had gone.  Winner of 3 from 5 races en-route to last season’s 4WD title, he continued, ‘I had some mistakes in the last practice so didn’t get the 2-laps I wished for but the car is there. It’s very good’.  Asked about tyre wear, the Xray driver replied,  ‘that was the third round on the same set but now it’s time to change so the wear is normal’.

‘Coming here we didn’t know what to expect because I had moved to Spain and my car was the same as I raced at the DHI Cup’, was Ronnefalk’s reaction after practice.  The HB Racing driver continued, ‘at the DHI they had EOS carpet but here it feels different. The car works better here’.  Trying ‘stuff’ for the final practice, the Swede said, ‘It didn’t work out’ but overall the car is ‘pretty good but not fast enough to keep up with Bruno’ having run behind the Champion on track.  He concluded, ‘I want to do well but we are here to learn and test new things on the car’.

Pausing to give his response on how practice went Martin described it as ‘strange’.  He said, ‘the track is high speed and in the turns you are on throttle and our car is lifting.  We need to stop rear of car dumping down.  We need a couple more practice’.  The Yokomo drivers added, ‘I haven’t been on a track this fast before so it’s a new problem for this car.  It is an age old problem’.

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