Leino, Strom & Lemieux into Final

Teemu Leino, Roland Strom and Paul Lemieux have secured their places in the 2008 Worlds Final after taking the top 3 places in the Semi Final B combined results. The race had to be run over two parts after a rain shower interrupted to orginal run 17 minutes in. Lemieux had a comfortable lead over Leino in the first part of the final when the weather caused the race director to stop the race.

In the second part, run over the 13 remaining minutes of the half hour race distannce, Lemieux started from pole but quickly fell back down the order leaving Leino to cruise to the win of both the second part of the race and the overall ranking. Swede Strom, who put pressure on Leino for the second win, eventually claimed second and the runners up spot in the combined result while Lemieux’s win in the first part plus his fifth in Part 2 was enough to secure 3rd overall. Martin Hudy was having a great drive but was hit with radio glitches in the dying part of the race which appear to have cost him a place in the final.

The Semi B brought to an end the great showing by 1:5 World Champion Martin Lissau who’s car suffered a wheel axle failure in the second half of the race causing him to miss the start. He got going again but pulled up with further problems after just 8 laps. Also dropping out from the event in this race was Japan’s Takaaki Shimo who had battled for the TQ in early qualifying.

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