August 8, 2010

Volker is deserving Champion

Ronald Volker

Having won the European Indoor Championship from pole earlier this year, Ronald Volker has repeated the feat outdoors winning the second leg of A-Mains here in Aniche, France to regain the EFRA European Championships which he held in 2007.  The German didn’t win by as convincing a margin as in the opening leg saying his LRP powered Yokomo BD5 was very loose but opening up a 2 second gap he was still able to control the race ahead of the Tamiya’s of Elliot Harper and Viktor Wilck.  Commenting on his win, Volker said he was delighted to win as it made up for the disappointment of his World Championship campaign last month in Burgorf, Germany.

Ronald Volker

Although the indoor Euros has only been run twice, this being the 12th running of the event on tarmac, he will go into the history books as the first driver to hold both European Touring Car titles consecutively.  With the title now sewn up and the final two places on the podium up for grabs Volker will sit out the 3rd A-Main but he will not have long to relax as next weekend he will attempt to retake the German National Championship title which he hasn’t won since 2006.

Elliot Harper

While the timing screen showed Wilck taking second in Leg 2 it was actually Harper who crossed the line in second with the Swede right on his bumper.  The result was later corrected with the times from the back up timing loop declared the official result.  Setting the fastest lap of the race Wilck clearly had the faster of the two Speed Passion powered Tamiyas but couldn’t find a way through without risking hitting his team-mate on the very tight and technical Circuit Léo Lagrange track.

Andy Moore and Juho Levanen

The race saw little overtaking with the most interesting battle being for fourth place between former & current World Champions Andy Moore and Marc Rheinard.  Moore eventually got the better of the pair who clashed on the last run down the main straight and took the position but the incident cost Rheinard a place  as outgoing Champion Jilles Groskamp managed to squeeze past.  In the end it wasn’t to matter as Rheinard was excluded from the results when his bodyshell was found to be too low in post race scrutiny.  Moore said his Hot Bodies was very fast in the first half of the race and he felt he was closing in on the battle for second but around 3 minutes in his TCX got very loose which the Brit admitted wasn’t helped by the fact he started over driving in an attempt to keep Rheinard behind.

With the exclusion of Rheinard, Loic Jasmin took sixth position after a good battle with Jilles Groskamp while Juho Levanen, the big mover in Leg 1, was seventh and the last classified finisher.  Having successfully defended his European Junior title here by virtue of the fact he was the only Junior driver to make the A-Main, 16-year-old Yannick Pruemper pulled up just after three minutes after rolling his Yokomo out of the battle with Groskamp and Jasmin.  Unfortunately for Team Corally’s Marc Fisher his race ended with a bang at the first corner as a touch with Levanen in the run into the first corner sent his car crashing into the barrier breaking the front spool.

A-main Leg 2 results
1. Ronald Volker – 15 Laps in 5:03.100
2. Elliott Harper – 15 Laps in 5:04.830
3. Victor Wilck – 15 Laps in 5:04.897
4. Andy Moore – 15 Laps in 5:10.165
5. Jilles Groskamp – 15 Laps in 5:10.457
6. Loïc Jasmin- 15 Laps in 5:12.431
7. Juho Levanen – 15 Laps in 5:12.917
8. Yannick Pruemper – 9 Laps in 3:12.306
9. Marc Fischer – 0 Laps in 0:00.000
10.Marc Rheinard – DSQ

Full results can be found here.

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