Today the Circuito Internacional de Zuera was the venue of some exciting race action. After the qualifying sessions on Friday the ROTAX International Open held its heat races on the high-speed track in northern Spain. Nine races, each filled with the complete grids of juniors, seniors and DD2 were on the agenda, refining the circle of favourites before the finals on Sunday.
The juniors showed a highly balanced competition in the heats, which came up with three different winners. The qualifying quickest Lluc Ibanez (Binakart) from Spain took a win while the UK guys Oliver York (Strawberry Racing) and Jack McCarthy (Strawberry Racing) shared the remaining victories. Yet local hero Ibanez was not able to defend his top position, since he had to retire in one race, pushing him back to eighth position in the ranking. In the lead York and McCarthy ended up with equal points but finally York had the advantage of the better qualifying result. Behind the duo Presley Martono (Aim Motorsport) from Indonesia, Alex Quinn (Coles Racing) from the UK and Russia’s Dennis Mavlanov (Zeta Corse) completed the top five of the prefinal’s grid.
Without any mistakes Josh Price (Strawberry Racing) from the UK was the unbeatable driver in the senior category. He took the hat-trick and defended his pole position by a clean record. Strongest rival proved to be Lukasz Bartoszuk (Strawberry Racing) from Poland, who drove three consistent races, rewarding him with second place in the ranking. Japan’s Marino Sato (Uniq Racing) followed in third position ahead of Brett Ward (Aim Motorsport) from the UK and Dutchman Tom Meijer (Bouvin Power). Wiktoria Pankiewicz (Strawberry Racing), who had been second after the qualifying was without luck in the races and dropped back to twelfth position.
As for the direct drive karts Andreas Backman (Strawberry Racing) seemed to be the man to be beaten. After taking the pole position on Friday the man from Sweden celebrated two wins but in the last race a technical failure forced him to retire. That stain cost him the lead in the heat ranking and even worse, made him drop back to seventh position in the grid. On the top it was Shaun Slavin (KR Sport) from the UK who took the third win. Previously he had finished second twice thus boosting himself onto the pole position for the prefinal. Behind him Filippos Kalesis (VPDR) from Greece showed a great performance: After he had picked up the race from eighth place he improved to third position in the heat ranking, putting Adam Glear (Aim Motorsport) and Mathias Detige (Flandria Competition) into the chaser’s roles.
In the DD2 Masters category the spectators witnessed a change of guard. Tamsin Germain (DG Racing) made it up to the top, classifying eleventh in the overall grid. So she upstaged her male opponents like Cristiano Morgado (QZ Racing) as runner up and European champion Martin Pierce (Praga Racing Team) in third place. Local hero Javier Campo (TD Kart) lost ground being fifth of the Masters.
On Sunday the show goes on with the prefinals, which start at 10:20 a.m. with the juniors. Everybody is invited to join the action as live TV coverage will continue throughout the entire weekend. So stay tuned on the official website www.rotaxmaxeurochallenge.com or www.rgmmcmedia.com, where you get all information regarding reports, photos, results and live TV stream.
Info & Photo RGMMC