Champion Orlowski super-strong, Coelho with a great recovery, and a brilliant day for Hagberg at the Hudy Arena…
Schumacher`s Michal Orlowski had a pretty good day at the Hudy Arena as he was able to TQ both qualifying runs with his Schumacher Mi10 car, powered by Cayote batteries and controlled ba an Elceram speedo. The competition was tough and Orlowski was able to execute two very strong runs against the best in the business. He was very happy with the day saying that “the car was feeling good on track, even if it was always difficult to push so hard against all the others on track”. With two TQ runs to his favour, Orlowski can go into the remaining two rounds on Saturday in a very good mood!
Top seed Bruno Coelho had a “shmedium” Q1 when he made a mistake already in lap one of the race sending his Hobbywing powered Infinity car into the grass coming onto the straightway. He was not able to recover from that and had to take a disappointing seventh place for the round. In Q2, Coelho was able to recover as he was right in contention for the win against Orlowski. The decision for the win came down to the last lap of the race where Bruno had to lift the throttle for a moment to prevent contact with a crashed car in front of him. He lost one or two tenths of a second and came short to Orlowski by 0.1 seconds in the end. Not the result he wanted but still a very good recovery after Q1.
Behind Orlowski and Coelho we saw an extraordinary driving Alexander Hagberg scoring a second place in Q1 and a third place in Q2 putting him on a rock-solid third place overnight ahead of Mugen Seiki`s Ronald Völker, the Infinity of Viktor Wilck, Awesomatix driver Simon Lauter, Xray`s Marc Rheinard, Mattia Collina (Schumacher), Dominic Greiner (Serpent), and Lucas Urbain (Awesomatix).
Ratheisky leads Xray 1-2-3 at qualifying half-time in the Hudy Arena
Xray was looking very dominant in the first two rounds of Pro Stock qualifying on home soil. Jaroslav Kriz Jun. took the win in Q1 from Bultynck, Havranek, and Kretschmer while it was Jan Ratheisky who took the win in Q2 in front of Izsay (by only 0,046 of a second), and Mathias Nedrebo.
Pro Stock champion Bultynck looks like the only Awesomatix driver with a serious chance to challenge the performance of the Xray team here but he will need to deliver two mighty runs in Q3 and Q4 on Saturday to deny Xray the pole position at the Hudy Arena. The top ten after two rounds of qualifiyng: Ratheisky, Kriz, Izsay, Bultynck, Nedrebo, Havranek, Valent, Catelani, Kretschmer, Knopp.
Valent and van Gog leading the FWD class at qualifaying half-time
The first two rounds of FlySky Frontwheel qualifying saw Gergö Valent (Xray) and Robin van Gog (Schumacher) scoring a TQ run each. However, both of them also scored a bad result in the other run which means that they need to deliver one more good result in Q3 or Q4 to lock in a top spot on the grid. The most consistant driver in Q1 and Q2 was Ethan Southall from the UK who scored a second and a fourth place. The top five after the second round of qualifying was completed by Filip Bortoli and Max Weffers!
Ehrbar, Sommer, and Mateo topping 40+ qualifying on Friday
David Ehrbar did what he always does in 40+ Masters: He TQed both rounds of qualifying on Friday with his amazing looking Xray X4`27 car. ARC racer Patrick Sommer had a very impressive day as well and secured two second places behind Ehrbar to secure second place overnight – a really strong result for Sommer. Toni Mateo from Gran Canaria must be still on a high after Spain won the FIFA World Cup last week as he was able to secure two thirds places with his Awesomatix on Friday. The overnight top five got completed by Michel “Mr. BoomRC” Zierold (Awesomatix), and Renè Kölbel (Xray).
Austrian racer Hois holds overnight TQ at ETS RD2 in Slovakia
What a great day for Stefan Hois from Austria! He was abel to TQ both rounds of qualifying in the Hobbywing 21-5 Stopck class. He took the win in Q1 with a small gap of half a tenth over Ben Gerhardt and managed to extend this gap to one second over Gerhardt in Q2. Behind the top two drivers, David Kuschnarew is sitting in third place at qualifying half-time. Kuschnarew has not raced at the ETS since six or seven years bot quickly showed that he can still wheel a car around the track fast and consistant. Filip Bortoli and Juraj Gnidiak completed the top five on Friday evening!
Hoch in control of the Formula class
Czech Xray driver Lukas Hoch took the first two runds of Matrix Formula qualifying and is a well-deserved overnight TQ here in Trencin. Behind him we saw two more Xray cars, driven by the one and only Martin Hudy, and Jacques Libar. Jitse Miedema was the best “non Xray” driver and was able to put his Fenix car on P4 for the day ahead of our reigning ETS Formula champion David Ehrbar, and Andreas Stiebler.
