Nguyen & Iivonen add TQ runs at Asian Buggy Championships
With three rounds of qualifying in the books at the Asian Buggy Championships, the LAP Paradise RC Raceway in Malaysia has given us different TQ runs from three different drivers representing 3 different manufacturers, Kyosho’s Phi-Long Nguyen topping Q2 and Mayako’s Pekko Iivonen delivering in Q3. With Sworkz’s Caleb Noble opening nitro buggy qualifying with the fastest time, the stage is now set for an exciting fourth & final qualifier with all three drivers in the hunt for the overall TQ honours. After a mistake in Q1, Top Seed Nguyen made amends with a cleaner run to take a close TQ ahead of Iivonen and Noble, the three covered by just over a second. In Q3 it was Iivonen’s turn to execute a clean 5-minute run and he took the round by a significant 4.2-second margin over his Australian and American rivals who both had mistakes resulting in costly seconds lost. In eBuggy, Iivonen would make it back to back TQ run in Q3, while in Nitro Truggy, ABC New Zealand winner Noble locked in the overall TQ with a third consecutive TQ run allowing him to sit out Q4 and focus solely on buggy.
