TRENCIN, SLOVAKIA
For the 2019 EFRA European Championship we sent Marc, Viktor, Jilles and Yannic to a very hot Hudy Arena in Slovakia where winning our first 1:10 EP Touring European title was always going to be that bit more challenging than usual. Marc got the event off to a decent start taking his IF14 to the second fastest time in free practice but the home advantage was already evident over 3-consecutive laps. In seeding, Marc could somewhat reduce the gap at the top of the times as he ended up 3rd fastest with Viktor 8th fastest.
Concluding Day 1 of the Euros would be the first of 5 rounds of qualifying. Marc's efforts would earn him a P4, the drop-off over the 5-minutes hampering him from achieving more, and unfortunately this would end up his best run. Saturday's four qualifiers saw three DNF but luckily a P6 in Q4 meant Marc had two counting scores that booked his place in the A-Main, albeit only 6th. Joining him in the A-Main, it was a similarly difficult qualifying for Viktor and Jilles who ended up 8th and 9th. For Yannic it was a race to forget as he ended up BQ and had to raid the team's spare parts department as tyre gluing issues resulted in three massive high speed crashes that destroyed his car each time.
Following their tough qualifying, Finals Day wasn't to bring any improvement in fortunes. While Viktor climbed from 8th to 3rd in the opening final, that was to be pretty much the highlight of the day as Marc finished as he started. In A2, Viktor was again the lead IF14 moving up the order this time for a 5th place while Marc hit trouble in the closing laps and dropped to 10th. Wrapping up a difficult three days, A3 would be Marc and Jilles' best race as they finished 4th and 5th but overall it was Viktor who was the best finisher in 6th in front of Marc with Jilles ending up 9th. A disappointing Euros for sure, our EP team will regroup & analyse what they could have done better and prepare to come back stronger for the ETS encounter at the beautiful Apeldoorn track in the Netherlands.
