After numerous free practice sessions and the qualifying on Friday, the fifth ROTAX Winter Cup at Campillos (ES) was ready for race action on Saturday. 15 heats were on the agenda, ascertaining the grids for the final phase. Already got used to the daily change of conditions, the drivers once again had to cope with unpredictable and contrary weather. Most of the races were held on a wet and slippery track challenging the driver’s maximum skills.
In the DD2 category Sean Babington (Strawberry Racing) had the ball on his feet. After he already had set the best time in qualifying he was defended his top position in the heats. In a dominant way he controlled the lead in each race, regardless the conditions were like. That put him on pole position for the prefinal on Sunday. Behind the front-runner, Xen de Ruwe (ART Grand Prix) did a solid job. The last year’s Winter Cup winner took the second place in the ranking just ahead of Local hero Oriol Dalmau Caballero (Motor Club Deportivo Creixell) who managed to defend his third position from qualifying. As for the DD2 Masters it was Mikko Laine (DM Racing) who asserted himself in best position. He put his Tonykart in a remarkable eleventh position of the overall grid.
With five different winners the juniors proved to be a really competitive grid. Yet one youngster stood out of the pack: Richard Verschoor (Team TKP) was the only one being able to take two victories, which made him pole sitter for the prefinal on Sunday. Right next to him Juri Vips (Strawberry Racing)
captured the second position in the heat ranking in front of Thomas Preining (Team TKP), Darren Keane (Strawberry Racing) and Dave Wooder (Dan Holland Racing).
The seniors came up with a very balanced decision. After six heats one stated five different winners in the evening. Only Joseph Reilly (Strawberry Racing) – the fastest man from qualifying – celebrated twice and in doing so defended his first place in the overall ranking. Guan Yu Zhou (Strawberry Racing), Michael Cool (Bouvin Power), Philip Hamprecht (Strawberry Racing) and Tom Grice (Coles Racing) completed the top five positions of the 52 drivers comprising grid.
Info & Photo RGMMC