Wednesday 5 December 2012

Boots MP9 steals the show in Q5 @ Argentina


The unorthodox decision to hold the 5th and penultimate round of quali came yesterday but Elliott Boots will be thanking the organisers as he doubled up his TQ tally having been denied Q4 by a slow marshall. Karma balanced itself as Elliott put in a qualifying run that will surely go down in history, TQ’ing by a pretty competition crushing 13 seconds over Team Associated driver, Ryan Maifield.

The track changed quite a bit throughout the three rounds of qualifying, deteriorating significantly in Q4 as laptimes started rising it was a close run thing that Elliott Boots made it a hat trick of TQs today but for his slow marshal. Nonetheless a slightly improved day at the 2012 Worlds, one of the main reasons being the lack of expected rain, marshalls now wearing high viz jackets and a track that has turned from being a flat out cornerspeed challenge to a track that will bite you if you don’t pay attention, Boots may not top the overalls, but he’s laid down a challenge to catch him if anyone can. One qualifier remains, Q6 to be run tomorrow if the weather holds up, watch this space.

Boots said his MP9 was really good adding that he is gelling more and more with the track as it gets more bumpy. Having not done the Warm-up Race the British driver doesn’t have the same experience of the track as it deteriorates but he said on a few occasion enroute to becoming British National Champion he ran on tracks where the surface was similar to now and that this suits his driving. Describing the track surface as like ‘the Moon’ when asked how it was for Q5, Boots said his run could have been faster but he had trouble passing Maifield who in turn had trouble passing Xray’s Renaud Savoya. Not wanting to get caught up in with either buggies the 19-year-old with advice from his pitman Mike Craddock backed up until the pair sorted things out which he said cost him in total around 4 seconds. Asked about Q6, Boots said he would wait to see what the rain does but should it stay dry he will run the same set-up and again using AKA’s medium compound iBeam.
Source: NeoBuggy.net & RedRC.net

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