Topi Heikkinen dominates round nine qualifying

Topi Heikkinen swept the board to claim top qualifier spot for round nine of the 2019 TitansRX season at Nyirad in Hungary.

The Fin won each of his three heat races, and set the fastest overall time in each session to comfortably beat title rivals Timmy Hansen and Kevin Hansen.

Jerome Grosset-Janin vaulted up to fourth with a superb display in Q3 where he won his race by almost seven seconds. That came after heavy contact at the start of his Q2 race left him racing with a puncture for much of that five-lap contest.

Home hero ‚CsuCsu‘ ended qualifying in fifth. He had a tense battle with the Hansen brothers in Q3, leading the pair until the final sequence of corners on the last lap when they both found their way past.

Andreas Steffen and Reini Sampl were sixth and seventh respectively. Sampl had poor starts in his Q1 and Q3 races, but claimed a race in in Q2 which pushed him up the order.

Tamara Molinaro wound up eighth overall. After strong runs in Q1 and Q2 she was spun around by Timmy Hansen in the Final Q3 race which cost her overall position, but not her place in the semi-finals.

Ramona Karlsson was another driver who advanced in a low position despite putting in a solid performance. The Swede dominated her Q1 heat – her first race start in two years – but in Q2 she got caught up in a start incident with Grosset-Janin and Kevin Hansen which left her with suspension damage that forced her to retire. Another heat win in Q3 ensured she made the semi-finals on her first TitansRX appearance however.

Another wildcard driver advancing on his debut outing was Hungarian star Tamas Turi. He finished qualifying in 10th, ahead of Abbie Eaton and Perry McCarthy.

Resuming their rivalry from the MJP Arena, Eaton and McCarthy were involved in one of the closest battles of the year so far in Q3, a race that will go down as one of the best in TitansRX history. It was McCarthy who made the stronger start but Eaton was able to fight back right away, and worked her way up to second, ahead of McCarthy.

Both were able to keep with race leader Karlsson despite their on-track squabble but on the penultimate lap McCarthy made contact with Eaton win an attempt to retake second. While neither lost a spot in the incident, it all but confirmed their second and third places in that particular race.

Missing out on advancing was wildcard drivers Werner Panhauser and Dietmar Brandt, as well as Ronny C’Rock whose run of poor luck continued.

After hitting a wall and breaking his car’s suspension in Q1, the German driver was forced to retire for a second time in Q2 when his engine overheated. The engine issue, his second in as many weekends, brought an early end to his day.

TitansRX round nine qualifying results