CAAL Racing swept the Pole Position at Brands Hatch after Gianmarco Ercoli and Alberto Naska, aided by a stewards decision for an incident in the EuroNASCAR 2 Qualifying, took pole in their respective divisions.
American SpeedFest 10, Powered by Lucas Oil have provided the fans with a dose of drama as a stewards decision decides the pole sitter in EuroNASCAR 2. Paul Jouffreau was supposed to be the one who claimed the top spot in EN2’s Qualifying session, but he was penalized after the session for impeding another driver, which handed the Pole Position award to Alberto Naska.
In the meantime, veteran youngster Gianmarco Ercoli tops the Superpole session in EuroNASCAR PRO after Friday’s fastest Vittorio Ghirelli topped the combined Practice timesheets. The recap of Friday’s activity and the Qualifying session for both EuroNASCAR PRO and EuroNASCAR 2 can be checked in the sections below.
Friday’s Recap
The action at American SpeedFest 10 began on Friday with the Free Practice sessions and as usual, EuroNASCAR PRO and EuroNASCAR 2 had two Practice sessions for the drivers and teams to familiarize themselves with the Brands Hatch Indy Circuit.
It was the Italians who managed to conquer Brands Hatch on the opening day after Vittorio Ghirelli and Alberto Naska came out on top on their division’s combined timesheets with a time of 48.656 and 48.938 respectively.
Ghirelli, who took the top spot in both sessions, led a Team Bleekemolen 1-2 finish in EuroNASCAR PRO since Sebastiaan Bleekemolen ended the day in second place, just 0.115 seconds behind the 2020 EN2 champion. Liam Hezemans and Gianmarco Ercoli, who tangled at Valencia, were third and fourth with the former leading the Junior Trophy drivers.
Tobias Dauenhauer came home fifth in his first on-track EuroNASCAR outing in a year. He finished ahead of Anthony Kumpen and Marc Goossens, who set the exact same time in FP2. Both drivers were declared to finish in joint sixth, although Kumpen did set a better time than “the Goose” in FP1 – 49.348 compared to Goossens’ 49.620.
Frédéric Gabillon was eighth ahead of Challenger Trophy leader Fabrizio Armetta, who ran strong all day long. Martin Doubek completed the top-10 ahead of Giorgio Maggi, while championship leader Lucas Lasserre who struggled all-day long and could only secure 12th on the opening day.
Valencia pole sitter Vladimiros Tziortzis had an even more miserable day in the office. After finishing outside the top-10 in FP1, technical issues on his No. 5 ENEOS FJ prevented the Cypriot from setting a lap time in FP2. Another driver with issues is Néo Lambert, who had all of his FP2 times deleted due to excessive track limit violations.
ENPRO FREE PRACTICE 1 RESULTS | ENPRO FREE PRACTICE 2 RESULTS
In EuroNASCAR 2, Alberto Naska finished on the lead after he narrowly beat Hendriks Motorsport’s Martin Doubek by just two hundredths of a second. The Italian ended FP1 in fourth before finding his groove in the evening to put him on top of the combined timesheets.
Tziortzis had much better luck in the EN2 division, finishing third after coming out on top of the first Practice session. The Cypriot will be defending his championship lead from the likes of Gil Linster and Paul Jouffreau, who closed out the Practice sessions in fourth and fifth respectively.
Claudio Remigio Cappelli leads the Legend Trophy drivers in sixth ahead of Melvin de Groot. Roberto Benedetti was eighth ahead of Riccardo Romagnoli while Thomas Toffel completes the top-10 as the leading driver in the Rookie Trophy sub-classification.
Toffel beat Jack Davidson, who crashed the No. 48 GTOmega Camaro at Paddock Hill late in FP2. His time is still good enough for 11th place on the combined timesheets, putting him 10 places ahead of fellow Brit Gordon Barnes.
Barnes, the two-time Club Challenge champion, is making his EN2 debut behind the wheel of the No. 99 Bremotion Camaro.
EN2 FREE PRACTICE 1 RESULTS | EN2 FREE PRACTICE 2 RESULTS
Qualifying Recap
The Qualifying sessions for American SpeedFest 10 began at 9 AM local time. Due to how compact Brands Hatch’s Indy Circuit is in comparison to the other tracks on the calendar, Qualifying for both EuroNASCAR PRO and EuroNASCAR 2 are separated into two groups based on their championship standing positions.
An incident-free Qualifying for the top class competitors saw Vittorio Ghirelli continue his reign at the top, putting the No. 72 infitto.eu Toyota Camry on the top with a time of 48.592 seconds that he set in Group 2.
Gianmarco Ercoli put the No. 54 The Italian Box Chevrolet Camaro in second place ahead of Vladimiros Tziortzis, who managed to sort out his issues from Practice. The Hendriks duo of Liam Hezemans and Martin Doubek completed the top-5 with Giorgio Maggi finishing sixth.
Frédéric Gabillon and Anthony Kumpen were the seventh and eighth fastest respectively. A number of top drivers failed to advance to the Superpole session, chief among which is championship leader Lucas Lasserre. The SpeedHouse driver was only twelfth fastest in the combined timesheets.
The Group Qualifying format showed that the Group 2 drivers had the upper hand. Group 2 drivers were able to take advantage of the rubber laid down by the previous group, leading to the top-8 of the Qualifying session being filled by Group 2 drivers. Only Sebastiaan Bleekemolen and Fabrizio Armetta advanced to Superpole from Group 1 in ninth and tenth respectively.
Armetta, the only Challenger Trophy driver to enter the top-10 shootout, showed his fighting spirit in his Group 1 qualifying as he beat Tobias Dauenhauer on his final flying lap. Dauenhauer revealed that he gambled to do less laps in Qualifying, which ultimately backfired due to Armetta’s late push.
Despite the pace disparity between the two groups, the gap proved to be really close: A total of 17 drivers were within one second of each other and only three tenths separated Ghirelli and Armetta, showing that every single millisecond counts at Brands Hatch!
With how close the field ended up in Qualifying, the Superpole promises a thrilling action and the results certainly didn’t disappoint. A gap of 0.048 seconds determined who starts on pole for the Saturday race, which went to Gianmarco Ercoli’s favor as he secured his sixth career pole position in the top close.
“It’s a great pleasure for me to earn pole position at this circuit!” said Ercoli, who happily chats with Liam Hezemans just before the post-Qualifying interview. “I’m happy with the work done by the team because yesterday we stayed in around fourth or fifth. So, yesterday night we changed the setup and now we’ve improved to pole position!”
Liam would end up in second, being sandwiched by the Italian contingent as Ghirelli was third in the all-important Superpole. Liam also ended up as the top driver in the Junior Trophy sub-classifications. Anthony Kumpen puts his No. 24 Heinz Performance Camaro in fourth ahead of Maggi, Bleekemolen, and Tziortzis.
Fabrizio Armetta capped off his strong Qualifying performance by beating Gabillon and Doubek with an eighth place finish on Superpole. With a gap of just 0.408 seconds from Ercoli’s pole time of 48.411 seconds, The Club Motorsport’s owner-driver showed that his top-10 heroics from last year was not a fluke.
EuroNASCAR 2’s Qualifying sessions went to green at 9:45 AM local time with the returning Melvin de Groot leading the Group 1 contenders out of the pits. Compared to EuroNASCAR PRO’s Qualifying, there were numerous incidents and a steward’s decision that played a factor in the final results.
After both groups completed their respective sessions, Group 2’s Paul Jouffreau had secured the top spot with a lap time of 48.621 seconds and it looks as if he managed to successfully claim his first career pole position in the series. Unfortunately for the Frenchman, he made a crucial mistake that costed him the pole position.
With five minutes to go in his session, Jouffreau had slowed down to make some gap to the driver in front of him for a hot lap attempt. He, however, failed to recognize that Gil Linster and Alberto Naska – who were on fast laps on their own – were about to converge on his chosen line at Clark Curve.
Linster had little time to react and in the end, the Luxembourger spun Jouffreau out. Jouffreau was able to continue his session without taking much damage while Linster had to visit the pits after the hood of his No. 50 Binance Toyota got blown open from the impact.
In the end, the stewards deemed that Jouffreau was at fault for impeding another driver and deleted his fastest lap time from the session. Jouffreau admitted that the collision was his fault and after the session, he went to the Hendriks Motorsport pit box to apologize to Linster.
The steward’s decision was music to Alberto Naska’s ears, as Jouffreau’s demotion meant that the Italian secured the Pole Award for the first time in 2023. He bested former class champion Doubek, whom the 33-year old Italian driver beat by just 0.081 seconds.
Tziortzis qualified in third place, although it wasn’t smooth sailing for the championship leader as mechanical issues forced the Cypriot to stop the No. 5 ENEOS FJ on the track. Jouffreau ultimately was fourth ahead of Patrick Schober, Linster, and de Groot, who was the top driver in both Legend Trophy and Group 1 Qualifying session.
Claudio Remigio Cappelli was eighth ahead of top Rookie Trophy driver Jack Davidson. The Scotsman proved that the No. 48 GTOmega Chevrolet is ready in action after Marko Stipp Motorsport mechanics worked hard until 4 AM in the morning to fully repair the car after his crash in Friday’s Practice.
Riccardo Romagnoli completed the Legend Trophy top-3 in tenth, but was originally docked 10 points after the session due to changing his tires in the parc ferme. The Club Motorsport then filed a protest, noting that they did the tire change outside of the time window for parc ferme inspections. In the end, the stewards reversed the decision and reinstated Romagnoli’s lost points.
Thomas Toffel and Nick Schneider filled out the top-3 in Rookie Trophy in 12th and 13th respectively, while another rookie Max Mason had a spin at the end of his Qualifying session. Mason ultimately qualified 19th, one position ahead of American Nick Strickler and two ahead of Barnes.
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