Kato again in Q2 as Iivonen throws it away under the lights at Pine Hills
Racing under the flood lights at the Pine Hills track in Brisbane, Infinity’s Kouki Kato made it two from two in qualifying at the third round of the Asian Buggy Championships. Again it was a last lap mistake that promoted Kato to the top of the timing screens, this time top seed Pekko Iivonen with the costly error. With driver errors the talking point of qualifying so far, Iivonen dropped two & a half seconds as a result of his mistake allowing Kato to back up Q1 with another TQ run by 1.358-seconds over the Finn’s Mayako. Racing under flood lights in order to get a second round of qualifying in the books as the forecast is giving rain for the morning, Jackson Beale would complete the Top 3 for Tekno. After an error in Q1 that left him P10, a clean run in Q2 allowed the 19-year-old to back up his strong showing in seeding. After a P2 in the first round, last year’s race winner Caleb Noble had two bad laps and ended up P5 behind Pine Hill Club President Zac Ryan. Opening with a P3, Jayden Edmunds again had traffic issues but this time it lead to a costly error and he ended the day with a P6. Opening the second round of qualifying with a TQ run in eBuggy ahead of Iivonen and Tyler Jones, Team Associated’s Alex Bernadzik couldn’t repeat in Nitro ending up 7th.