Leino & Kurzbuch top free practice at ENS Austria

Teemu Leino and Simon Kurzbuch set the pace in free practice at Round 3 of the Euro Nitro Series, the championship resuming after a 10 week break with last year’s event winners topping the times.  In 1:10 Leino was fastest over the 5-rounds of free practice at the Aigen-Schlägl track from 2014 event winner Dominic Greiner.  With Leino’s team-mate Francesco Tironi third fastest it was a good start to the weekend for Team Infinity with Capricorn’s Thilo Tödtmann completing the Top 4.  For championship leader Dirk Wischnewski practice would see the Shepherd driver post only the seventh fastest time over 3-consecutive laps of what all drivers agree is one of the more difficult tracks on the ENS calendar.   In 1:8 it was pretty much business as usual for Kurzbuch as he topped the times from reigning champion Dario Balestri and Robert Pietsch.

Running the same prototype Infinity car that Creation Model debuted at the World Championships in Italy last month, Leino said the big difference to then is that they have had ‘the extra 2-days of testing we needed’ to properly get to grips with the new car.  Describing the car as ‘now getting better’, the Finn who won an epic final here last year from Jilles Groskamp and Greiner, added ‘the car is fast but I need to make it more easy to drive’.

‘Ok so far’ was how Greiner summed up practice adding, ‘it’s very close between Teemu & me’.  Fresh from winning the German Nationals last weekend, joking he is going for 3-in a row this weekend, the Serpent driver said his 748 is ‘very safe to drive’.  Feeling it is ‘a bit to easy at the moment’ he will try to find more steering in the two rounds of controlled practice that will bring a close to the first official day of the event.  Looking to qualifying, all 5 rounds on tomorrow’s schedule, he said ‘4-minutes is a bit different to 3-laps’.

Tironi felt his free practice performance was ‘quite good’ adding his ‘car feels quite good’.  The Italian who was Top Qualifier here in 2014, then driving for Shepherd, continued, ‘we fight to try to stay with both Teemu and Greiner’.  Echoing Leino’s view on progress made with the prototype Infinity he said, ‘for sure one more week of testing has helped and we definitely have a good base car so we can only make it better and better’.  In terms of improving the car for the Aigen track, the former Words podium finisher said ‘when I push hard it gets loose on the rear so we will try to improve this for qualifying’.

Heading the 1:8 times, Kurzbuch said, ‘I have had a lot of practice now which allowed us to test many different things’.  Back to back testing the new R18 Flat bodyshell from Xtreme Aerodynamics against the R18 EVO he said he found the Flat to give him more mid corner steering.  Also testing all day yesterday, the factory Novarossi driver has been able to use the track time to choose his engines for both ‘the push’ in qualifying and the final.  Describing the track as ‘unique’, he ‘really like(s) it’ highlighting its slight inclination as a nice feature.

‘Always the same, Simon, me and Robert’ was Balestri’s reaction to the free practice times.  The Capricorn driver said, ‘there is a lot of work with this track, it’s super hard on the car’ a reference to getting the car to work on the bumps and deal with the low traction.  On his LAB C802 set-up he said, ‘we are still trying to find something good’.  Asked what that was he replied, ‘more traction’.

While Pietsch said the free practice had gone ‘pretty good’, the former World Champion added, ‘I always have a little problem on small tracks like this because my engine is good for fast tracks as it has very good top speed while the mid range could be better’.   The factory Mugen/Picco driver still feels ‘it’s going to be very close but Simon will be fastest and Dario and me will find our position’ adding ‘the car set-up is good’.

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