Team Bleekemolen’s Vittorio Ghirelli dominated Practice and Qualifying in EuroNASCAR PRO while the record for most pole positions in EuroNASCAR 2 was broken by Vladimiros Tziortzis.
The predicted rain did come for the Qualifying sessions of NASCAR GP Czech Republic at Autodrom Most, setting the stage for a highly exciting session. The action brought upon by the rain didn’t disappoint as the slippery track and drying conditions made for a highly challenging shootout for the drivers in both EuroNASCAR PRO and EuroNASCAR 2.
Vittorio Ghirelli showed that the No. 72 Team Bleekemolen Toyota Camry was fast in both dry and wet conditions after the Italian topped the Practice and Qualifying. Meanwhile, a record was broken by Vladimiros Tziortzis as his 12th career pole position in EuroNASCAR 2 gave him the outright record for the most pole positions in the junior division.
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 Recap
Friday’s action started with the third round of the EuroNASCAR Club Challenge division. Reigning two-time champion Gordon Barnes once again came out on top after he beat SpeedHouse Racing’s Florian Richard and Alain Mosqueron, allowing the Brit to extend his lead in the standings. The recap of Club Challenge can be read in the link here.
The day’s activities were followed by the Free Practice sessions for EuroNASCAR PRO and EuroNASCAR 2. After the customary two sessions for each class, Vittorio Ghirelli came out as the fastest in the top class while Gil Linster topped the timesheets in the junior division.
Ghirelli continued the momentum that he had built from Vallelunga by setting a time of 1:40.624, 0.332 seconds faster than Liam Hezemans. Liam’s time allowed him to claim the top spot in Junior Trophy, making it a good start for the driver that’s under pressure to not make another mistake this week.
EuroNASCAR PRO rookie Vladimiros Tziortzis was third ahead of former champion Anthony Kumpen, who topped the first Practice session. 2022 winner Sebastiaan Bleekemolen completes the top-5 ahead of home crowd favorite Martin Doubek and 2021 EN2 winner Tobias Dauenhauer.
Paul Jouffreau, Thomas Krasonis and Lucas Lasserre rounded out the top-10 positions ahead of Fabrizio Armetta, the fastest in the Challenger Trophy. Armetta had some adversity coming his way at Most as his antics at Vallelunga resulted in a 10-place grid penalty for the Saturday race.
Another driver with a grid penalty is Dario Caso, who received a similar penalty after he intentionally took out Armetta in Italy. Fellow countryman and championship leader Gianmarco Ercoli was only 14th after he crashed in the first session.
One driver who did have an incident-free day is Jack Davidson, who ended up in 17th after the Brit received a surprise call-up to EuroNASCAR PRO. Yevgen Sokolovskiy was unable to compete as did Stefano Attianese and Marc Goossens. In Goossens’ case, he was absent because the weekend at Most clashed with Belcar’s Zolder 24 Hours race.
ENPRO FREE PRACTICE 1 RESULTS | ENPRO FREE PRACTICE 2 RESULTS
In EuroNASCAR 2, Luxembourg’s Gil Linster was on top for the first time since Valencia. The Hendriks Motorsport driver clocked a time of 1:41.207 to give him the top spot from Paul Jouffreau, who plots to follow up his maiden victory at Vallelunga with a second one.
Doubek was the third fastest ahead of Alberto Naska with Vladimiros Tziortzis only in fifth overall. Sixth was Melvin de Groot, the fastest in Legend Trophy. Patrick Schober was seventh, still racing the backup car, ahead of Thomas Toffel who ended his day as the top driver among the rookies in Rookie Trophy.
The top-10 positions were closed by Toffel’s Rookie Trophy rivals Davidson and Thomas Dombrowski. The youngsters came home ahead of the veterans Roberto Benedetti and Michael Bleekemolen, who were 11th and 12th respectively.
The Lady Trophy was dominated by Alina Loibnegger, who put good use of the experience that she gained in the top class. While Loibnegger was only 18th out of the 23 drivers running, she was 3 seconds ahead of Arianna Casoli and 10 seconds ahead of Stefani Mogorović in her debut race week on EuroNASCAR.
EN2 FREE PRACTICE 1 RESULTS | EN2 FREE PRACTICE 2 RESULTS
Saturday Recap
Rain arrived at Autodrom Most on Saturday morning and while the sun was out by the time EuroNASCAR PRO’s Qualifying began, it was still too wet for drivers to use the slick tires. Thus, everyone ran wet tires and it’s Tobias Dauenhauer who set the best lap time of the Qualifying session with a time of 1:57.744.
Ghirelli ended up second, just 0.116 seconds behind the German. Ercoli, Jouffreau and Sebastiaan completed the top-5 positions ahead of Fabrizio Armetta, who created a huge surprise by setting the sixth fastest time onboard the No. 55 Dinoil Camaro.
Kumpen and Liam were seventh and eighth respectively, safe from the massive shake up of timings that happened behind them as many drivers battled for the last two positions in Superpole in the dying minutes of the session.
In the end, it was Davidson and Tziortzis who escaped the clutches of elimination by the slimmest of margins. Ulysse Delsaux, the highest ranked driver eliminated in Qualifying, was only 0.008 seconds behind the Cypriot. Championship runner-up Lucas Lasserre was only 12th while Dario Caso ended up 13th after he nearly advanced to the Superpole session.
Tobias Dauenhauer ultimately failed to retain the pace that he had during the Superpole session. The shootout was topped by Vittorio Ghirelli, who ensured that the No. 72 infitto.eu Toyota Camry was fast in both wet and dry conditions.
“The conditions were tricky because it was wet at the beginning but then the track started to dry,” said the Fasano native to André Wiegold after the Superpole. “That’s why it was so slippery out there. I was sideways the whole lap long wrestling the car around those fast turns.”
“We had a good car and the whole Team Bleekemolen did an amazing job. We were always fast in the races but we lacked the last tenths of a second in Qualifying. It feels so good to be back on Pole Position and we now want to keep the momentum for the races.”
Ghirelli’s pole time of 1:54.842 was almost three seconds quicker than Dauenhauer’s time on Qualifying, showcasing just how fast the track was drying.
The drying conditions was a good blessing for Paul Jouffreau as he narrowly beat Anthony Kumpen and Sebastiaan Bleekemolen – the trio was separated by less than a hundred of a second – for the outside of the front row.
Liam Hezemans was fifth ahead of former teammate Dauenhauer. Gianmarco Ercoli surprisingly struggled in the drying-but-slippery conditions and could only finish in seventh ahead of the penalized Armetta. Jack Davidson and Vladimiros Tziortzis failed to make a huge impression and closed out the top-10 rankings on the Superpole session.
ENPRO QUALIFYING & SUPERPOLE RESULTS
EuroNASCAR 2’s Qualifying session got underway a short while later and with dry patches starting to appear on the track, it was apparent that the session would evolve massively as the minutes ticked by. The track dried at such a rapid rate that drivers gained nine seconds in just twenty minutes!
In the end, EuroNASCAR 2’s Qualifying king Vladimiros Tziortzis was back on his throne as his time of 1:42.008 allowed the Cypriot to claim the all-time record for most pole positions in the division. The closest driver to match Tziortzis’ time is his closest title challenger Alberto Naska, who was only 0.204 seconds slower.
Tziortzis had tied the previous record – Tobias Dauenhauer’s 11 poles – at Brands Hatch and came away empty handed on his first shot at breaking it in Vallelunga. Tziortzis learned from his experience at Zolder last year and gambled to go on the slicks throughout the whole session to give him the optimum build-up needed to heat up his tires.
“It was so cool at the end,” said the driver of the No. 5 Academy FJ. “At the beginning we had to make the tough decision to go out on slicks or wet tires. I made the decision to go out on slicks and it paid off.”
“I didn’t make this right decision last time in Zolder where we fell back down the order to eighth place on the last lap of Qualifying. I just gambled and took the slick tires. We decided to bet on slick tires right from the beginning and I clocked the best time on the very last lap of this session.”
Another driver who truly starred in the session is Jack Davidson. Already familiar with mixed conditions thanks to the infamous United Kingdom weather and armed with extra experience from both his double duty outing and Marko Stipp’s mid-season test last week, Davidson secured his best Qualifying result of his career so far with a third place finish.
Paul Jouffreau, who set the initial benchmark time of 1:51.293, joined Davidson in the second row of the grid. At one point it seemed that Gil Linster would repeat his heroics from Zolder, but the Luxembourger was only fifth at the end.
Patrick Schober remained consistent and placed the sixth fastest lap time of the session. First position in the Legend Trophy sub-classification was claimed by Roberto Benedetti in seventh place, leading Rookie Trophy leader Thomas Dombrowski and fellow Legend Trophy contenders Melvin de Groot and Michael Bleekemolen.
Valerio Marzi and Thomas Toffel were eleventh and twelfth respectively, but they would be sent to the back of the grid after receiving a 10-place grid penalty of their own.
Sadly for the local fans, Martin Doubek was only 16th after his gear shifter broke during the session. Doubek was ahead of Alina Loibnegger, who once again was fastest in the Lady Trophy by some distance from Mogorović and Casoli.
Disclaimer: Credits for all photos are listed underneath each image.
Last Updated: 28 August 2023