Turkish delight for Pietsch

Having set the pace in practice, secured TQ honours in qualifying, factory Mugen driver Robert Pietsch completed the perfect weekend with victory in the final to become the inaugural 1:8 Bumod Grand Prix Champion. The German National Champion completed 191 laps in the one hour final to head home the Serpent of American DJ Apolaro, who was 2 laps adrift, with Turkish Mugen driver Alparslan Ozanturk taking a hugely popular third.

Pietsch’s race did not get off to a good start as an altercation at the first corner dropped him down the order with Shepherd team driver Patrick Schaefer taking the early lead. First big casualty with just over a minute of the race run was Serpent’s Michael Salven. The multiple European Champion cleaned a front corner of his 966 after a high speed collision with a car that had spun in front of him on the main straight.

Seven and a half minutes in and another big international name was to exit the race. Leading and having laid down the fastest lap of the race, Schaefer made a driver error breaking an upright off his Velox along with destroying a servo. ‘One mistake was one too much’ the German said afterwards.  This allowed Pietsch to take control from Apolaro.  Both running factory Novarossi engines, the German was to have a strategy advantage over his rival opting to make one tyre change while Apolaro would have to complete the task twice on the Team Serpent car.  Behind, the big battle was for third with Sabrina Lechner overtaking early third place runner Ozanturk.  The fast lady, who did her second TV interview of the weekend right before the driver presentations, was starting to make third her own but hit engine trouble.  Her Max eventually cried enough with 10 minutes to go and the 19-year-old dropped back to sixth in the final classification behind the Motonica of Switzerland’s Pacor Ender and Bulgarian National Champion Borislav Tranchev’s Mugen.  This allowed Ozanturk to run untroubled to claim the final spot on the podium.

After the race Pietsch said his MRX-4X worked really well and he was really pleased with the weekend. The German believes with a slightly larger set of RPM tyres he could have made the 1 hour without stopping. Working with a new pitman this weekend, his regular one having prior buggy commitments this weekend, he said his refuelling was a little slow but it got faster as they worked more together. A definite finalist contender for the 1:8 World Championship in Lostallo, Pietsch believes the Bumod event, due to the track layout and the 1 hour final, was good preparation for the Worlds.

Apolaro looked shattered after the race, this being his first time to run a one hour final in 1:8. Pleased to finish on the podium on his first race outside of the US the Team Serpent driver was complimentary of the good pitwork by his mechanic. ‘The car was good and Scott (Rister) did a good job in the pits. It was a good team effort but having to do two stops against Pietsch’s one ruled us out of going for the win’. We expect Apolaro, who raced both 1:10 and 1:8 here this weekend, will sleep extremely well tonight.

So the inaugural Bumod Grand Prix has come to a close. The hospitality of the race organiser Ozan Tercan and his team was outstanding and all the international competitors are more than impressed with this very impressive facility.  Full of enthusiasm and a willingness to learn, the potential is there to make the Bumod GP a major international event for nitro cars. One suggestion doing the rounds among the team drivers is that the Bumod Grand Prix could be moved to later or earlier in the year and become Europe’s version of the Winternats. There is definitely an opening for an out of season onroad nitro race. Turkey has the weather and Bumod has the track. We look forward to the 2010 Bumod Grand Prix.

1/8th scale final results
1. Robert Pietsch (DE) – 191 Laps in 60:05.139
2. DJ Apolaro (USA) – 189 Laps in 60:18.703
3. Alparslan Ozanturk (TUR) – 166 Laps in 60:22.748
4. Pacor Ender – (CH) – 150 Laps in 60:18.054
5. Borislav Tranchev (BUL) – 138 Laps in 57:22.174
6. Sabrina Lechner (DE) – 137 Laps in 49:20.897
7. Damian Petrov (BUL) – 131 Laps in 60:02.865
8. Gokmen Cakan (TUR) – 123 Laps in 46:19.696
9. Patrick Schaefer (DE) – 22 Laps in 7:34.623
10.Michael Salven (DE) – 3 Laps in 1:12.374

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