Team-mate Groskamp has not had a good start to his event after Sunday’s reseed finds him in the B group, but the Dutch driver believes he has found what may be the a key factor in his lack of pace. Last night he found the reciever pack in his Orion engined Velox was running on four rather than the five cells.

Winner of the warm-up race, Team-mate Paolo Morganti said practice ran well for him and they have a good base set-up for the opening qualifier. Although American, Morgnati said he prefers European style track and believes the Gulf Coast circuit is really going to suit electric drivers.

The first ever 200mm World Champion, taking the historic win in Brazil in 2004, Adrien Bertin heads the Kyosho squad. The Frenchman really likes the layout but his campaign took a bit of a set-back in Sunday’s final practice run. Suffering a one-way bearing failure on the straight his car came to halt just before the end of the straight and despite repeatedly calling it he was collected by 2008 finalist Dario Balestri’s Team Magic which resulted in both cars being binned. Bertin switched to the same set-up as Japanese ace Takaaki Shimo for his second car and although much harder to driver he was able to knock 4/10th off his times