Controlled practice took place on Friday morning as Round 2 of the 2019-2020 Euro Touring Series got underway. Taking place for the third consecutive year at the Sporthotel in Daun, Germany, the large track with a unique shape poses interesting challenges for the near 420 entries this weekend.
Fastest in the Controlled Practice rounds, his CP1 time being the fastest by just one hundredth of a second, defending ETS Champion Bruno Coelho said the event was going “very good”. Noting that yesterday’s additional practice day, added due to the high entry count, was really useful to allow them to test and get a good setup, he said even this morning they were still testing things. Making changes for CP2 which clearly didn’t work out, the Portuguese driver said he will switch back to his CP1 settings and work on his XRAY T4 ‘20 further in qualifying.
Second in Practice was Ronald Völker. The German driver, when questioned about the race so far, smiled and simply said “everything is going well”. Hotly tipped to be the driver to beat this weekend, following his carpet wins at the EWS International and GP3F races either side of Christmas, Volker said the only change for qualifying will be to revert to his tyres from CP1, feeling the car had a slightly nicer balance on these. Commenting on the track, the Team Yokomo pilot said it was “awesome, the best we have had in Daun”.
Third quickest, one tenth behind his fellow German over the three lap seeding times, Marc Rheinard is making his ETS debut with an Awesomatix chassis. The former Creation Model Ltd. Infinity driver said that whilst he is not a formal part of the Awesomatix factory squad, being supported and now employed by TONISPORT, they are providing him with some great support and he is working well with new team-mates such as Freddy Südhoff (who was fourth fastest in practice), allowing them to work through a number of settings. Now set to de-brief with the team, Yannic Prümper making up the top five also with an Awesomatix, they will look to combine the findings to have a car ready to go for Q1 at lunchtime today.
