Pirani denies Kurzbuch in Q3

Andrea Pirani continued his impressive return to the Euro Nitro Series to TQ the third round of qualifying and deny Simon Kurzbuch from claiming an early fourth overall TQ of the season.  Opening the day with a 5th in Q1, the ARC driver improved for a P3 on his second attempt before delivering a surprise TQ, the Italian running in the second fastest heat.  With Kurzbuch taking the top heat ahead of title rival Bruno Coelho it looked like the reigning champion was a step closer to retaining the title but Pirani’s time was almost 3/10ths quicker. This means the Swiss ace will have to wait util the final qualifier to see if he can claim the bonus championship point on offer to the Top Qualifier with Pirani the only driver who can deny him this.  Completing the Top 3 would be former Fiorano winner Lamberto Collari who runs in the same heat as Pirani.  For Coelho the round would leave him with a P4 ahead of Dario Balestri and Oliver Mack.

‘Now we have enough steering’, said Pirani, the former ENS podium finisher very happy with his run.  He continued, ‘Unfortunately I don’t think I have a chance at the overall TQ but anyway I am happy with this result’.  Needing to TQ the final round in a faster time than that set by Kurzbuch in the cool morning conditions of Q1, he said, ‘I think it will be quite impossible to TQ because it will be too hot to beat Simon’s time and also I will have to use brand new tyres because I used my last practice set in the last qualifier’.  ‘Very happy with (his) car and engine’, he said, ‘I leave all the same for the last qualifier’.

Summing up his Q3 run, Kurzbuch said, ‘It was a good one but on my first lap I lost the rear because I braked a bit too late and I think that cost me the TQ’.  He continued, ‘I could catch back up to Bruno and Dario and for me the most important thing is to finish ahead of Bruno.  I won the heat but Pirani had a better run but that is OK’.  Asked if he felt Pirani posed a threat to him taking the overall TQ, he replied, ‘It will be hard for him to faster given the conditions so I feel pretty confident. Obviously my goal will be to try TQ the round’.

Another driver making steady progress over qualifying, Collari said , ‘It is getting little better step by step’.  The 9-time World Champion said his P3 was possible due to finding a little more steering from his Infinity, but added he ‘still need(s) more’.  For the fourth & final qualifier he plans to change body shell and well as make some further set-up changes to get the amount of steering he’s after.

It was good at the beginning and I was leading but then it starting sliding in the rear. I had no mistake but I slow down a lot’, was Coelho’s reaction after the penultimate qualifier.  Winner of the 2017 season opener in France, he continued, ‘In the beginning the car is very good but then it gets slower and we need to find a solution to make the car more stable over all the run’.

Getting a P4 in the previous qualifier, Balestri summed up his P5 run in Q3 by saying, ‘the car is easy to drive but not so fast’.  Saying he is already working on his set-up for the final, the Italian continued, ‘this set-up is not so bad for the final because I think the most important thing in the final will be to make no mistake’, the track layout leaving most drivers evenly matched on pace meaning after mistakes the lost time is hard to recover.

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Greiner continues return form with 1:10 TQ run

Dominic Greiner is continuing to be the benchmark on his return to 1:10 in the Euro Nitro Series with the Serpent driver TQ’ing the opening round of qualifying at Fiorano.  Despite setting the fastest time from Xray pairing Alessio Mazzeo and Bruno Coelho, the World Champion and most of his rivals were unhappy after the first of the four scheduled rounds, as the issue of a difference in tyre batches raised its head again.  With 1:8 having to be given an extra round of practice as the batch of race tyres proved to be a different shore to those supplied for practice, unfortunately it was in the first 1:10 qualifier that a suspected softer front shore tyre was first run as the handout tyre.

‘Super difficult, the balance was completely different’, was Greiner’s reaction as he went out to marshal.  The German continued, ‘I spoke to the other drivers and they had the same problem so it must be a different tyre.  My car was super good yesterday but now it is really difficult.  We need to check the tyres and work on a new set-up because this is the tyre we will be on for the rest of the weekend’.  Asked what he though was different about the latest batch of tyres he replied, ‘the car has more steering, the traction is ok so I think the front tyre now is softer’.

Mazzeo said, ‘My car was undriveable for the first 5 or 6 laps. It was so loose in the rear and I had many mistakes’.  He continued, ‘the last 4 or 5 laps it got better and I could push to finish the run but we must work with this new tyre now which is completely different to yesterday’.

Championship leader Coelho also described his car as ‘undriveable’.  He added, ‘many drivers complain of the same thing so maybe it is the tyres.  My car was really undriveable and it caused me to make many many mistakes that were not my fault. I just lost control of the car’.

Interestingly posting the fourth fastest time Toni Gruber didn’t find his WRC car difficult to drive, the tyres looking to have helped improve his car from yesterday.  The European Champion said, ‘the track changed a little bit to yesterday.  It was slower but my car had better steering than yesterday and I just tried to drive really safe’.  Feeling he lost time due to having run two 1:8 qualifiers this morning before the first 1:10 attempt and it took him some time to adjust back to his 1:10 driving style.  Saying his goal was a Top 3 run, he said finishing 22/100ths behind Coelho his P4 was OK given he had a slow start to the heat.  For Q2 he said he will ‘for sure drive safe again but push it a little harder’ now that he has got the feeling for 1:10 back again.

‘Not so good’ was David Loppini’s thoughts on Q1.  The Italian Xray driver added, ‘I think the tyres change from yesterday because I have a problem with the rear and it was a very difficult qualifier for me’.  He continued, ‘with another tyre we will have to change all the car to try get it to suit’. Behind Loppini, Manuel Strano completed the Top 6 ahead of Shepherd pairing Thilo Todtmann and Eduardo Escandon.

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Kurzbuch takes Q1 at ENS Finale

Simon Kurzbuch has taken the opening qualifier at the season finale of the Euro Nitro Series in Italy. Top seed for qualifying, the Shepherd driver took the first of the four rounds by 0.7 of a second from title rival Bruno Coelho, the Xray driver looking a much stronger contender that he had done in practice. Francesco Tironi led the Infinity challenge, posting the 3rd fastest time followed by team-mate Oliver Mack.  Making a return to the ENS, former podium finisher Andrea Pirani would take his ARC to the fifth fastest time ahead of newly crowned World Champion Dario Balestri.

‘The car was very good as well as the engine’, was Kurzbuch’s reaction after Q1.  The reigning champion and two time Fiorano winner continued, ‘I had a very good feeling from the car in the warm-up.  We just had to adjust the engine for the cooler conditions’.  Complimenting his new Futaba T7PX transmitter which he is running for the first time this weekend, he added, ‘Naoto was behind me so I could see what he was doing and at the end I was able to drive to bring it home’.  Happy to leave his Velox V8 unchanged for Q2, the Swiss driver said, ‘maybe we will switch to another engine to one more set-up for hotter conditions.  I have two race engines, one for when its cold and one when its hot’.

‘Very good compared to the other days’, was how Coelho summed up his qualifier.  Having struggled yesterday, he continued, ‘we found something very good on the car and it was a good run but I had 3-mistakes when I got on the curbs which were wet and lost time because of the that’.  Looking to Q2, he said, ‘the track is very easy, the best lap is the same for everyone so the small detail make the difference.  We changed the car a lot yesterday but now it works so we will leave it the same so I can get used to driving it and improve my consistency which is where the time is to be made’.

Seeding No.2 in controlled practice, Tironi said, ‘Like yesterday the feeling of the car was ok and everything worked good.  I am happy and with the feeling good I will leave it the same for the next one’.  Asked about his driving over the 4-minutes, the Italian replied, ‘I had traffic on the first lap but I don’t lose anything.  I had maybe 2 or 3 little mistakes when my line in the corner was not perfect but I think the run was close to my best’.

‘Happy’ was Mack’s reaction to setting the 4th fastest time.  Only 13th fastest in the seeding, the former European Champion continued, ‘yesterday I had a good car but I am not so good over 3-laps but over 4-minutes I am ok’.  He added, ‘my car was very nervous in the warm-up so we move the wing to the maximum height.  It was still nervous but got better during the heat.  I’m not sure whether to change something or not but I think I will go the same because 2 count so if I can get one more I’m OK for the final’.

Making a welcome return to the championship, this his first outing with ARC, Pirani said, ‘the car is working better than the days before.  We found the steering that we were missing the previous days. I’m happy’.  With the Top 5 covered by a second the Italian added, ‘we are all very close so it is important you don’t make a mistake’.  On his car set-up he said, ‘I will try to improve the steering again. In racing you always don’t have enough but what we have now is a good base set-up’.

Having a substantial off in the warm-up, Balestri was somewhat coy about his run to the sixth fastest time.  Last year’s Top Qualifier at Mini Autodromo Jody Scheckter, he said, ‘It was a slow run to get to the finish.  The car was ok but I had a little traffic in the end’.  Asked about car set-up having struggled to find balance in his newly built car yesterday, he replied, ‘we will change something’. Behind Balestri, Matsukura would post the 7th fastest time after two bad laps with Jesse Davis, Lamberto Collari and Alberto Picco rounding out the Top 10.

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Kurzbuch top seed in Fiorano

Simon Kurzbuch is the top seed for qualifying at the season finale of the Euro Nitro Series in Fiorano, Italy.  The defending champion was fastest after the two rounds of controlled practice from Francesco Tironi. Tironi headed a group of 5 Infinity cars that would fill out the Top 6 seeding times with Alberto Picco third ahead of Jesse Davis, Naoto Matsukura and Dario Balestri. Kurzbuch’s only title threat, Bruno Coelho’s would end practice down in P7, the Xray driver struggling so far in Italy to match the form he showed against the Shepherd over the 3 previous championship encounters this season.

Winner here last year despite qualifying P4, Kurzbuch was pleased that he has finally pieced together a good package the rest of the weekend.  Summing up CP1 pace as ‘2 good laps and 1 ok lap’ which put him P3 behind Matsukura and Balestri, he added his second attempt ‘was not only 3-good laps but a good (entire) run’.  The Swiss driver put his improvement down to having ‘found an engine for this track’.  The factory Novarossi driver tried three different engines over the day and having tried various venturi combinations yesterday he now had an engine for qualifying that suited the track layout and also gave him a good feeling at the controls.

Making a marked improvement on his free practice pace, Tironi said his car ‘works really well’ adding ‘the set-up is close to the Worlds, just with some camber changes’.  With his CP1 time outside the Top 10, a front roll bar change and further camber change for the second run made ‘a big difference to the corner speed’ allowing the Italian to improve his pace by 8/10ths. He concluded, ‘the feeling of the car is good so I think we are good for the qualifying’.

On the Fiorano podium last year, Picco said having tried ‘a few different set-ups’ they were ‘finally going in one direction’ to achieve the best solution for the track.  Describing it as ‘not easy’, the veteran racer said, ‘after the 1:5 race the track is a little strange.  It feels like understeer but it is easy to control out of the corner because of the traction’.  Fresh from making the final at the Worlds in France, he concluded, ‘we miss a little bit to the others but we can not really complain’.

Having solved his engine issues by replacing both the fuel tubing and fuel tank, Davis was happy with his Infinity/OS package describing the car as having a ‘good and consistent 4-minute set-up’.  Looking to qualifying the Aussie said, ‘we just needed to finalise the front and rear cambers and then we should be ok for (qualifying) tomorrow’.  Team-mate Matsukura who was fastest in CP1 said his ‘car was ok’ but his engine was too rich and that was why he couldn’t maintain the top spot when the track was faster for CP2.  Asked about changes for qualifying, 1:8 Onroad’s new star on the block said, they will ‘just open it up (the engine tuning) for tomorrow so we can go faster’.

‘We still need to find the optimal balance’ was Balestri’s summary of controlled practice.  The World Champion said the rear tyre this weekend for qualifying is softer and they need to find the right adjustment for the shore adding, we will work on it for tomorrow’.  Originally Q1 for 1:8 was to bring today’s action to a close but with drivers discovering the shore difference between the practice batch and the race batch of tyres the organisers added an extra round of free practice for drivers to adjust their set-ups with Q1 moved to tomorrow morning alongside that of the opening 1:10 qualifier.  Over a 1/10th of a second off Balestri,  Coelho believes part of his problem is the tyres.  The Xray driver said, ‘the car is not perfect but it now feels like no traction. Maybe the issue is with the tyres.  We need to find out something’.

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