Gianmarco Ercoli is declared the 2023 EuroNASCAR champion, albeit with controversy as a collision between Lucas Lasserre and Mario Ercoli played a decisive factor.
A new NASCAR Whelen Euro Series champion was crowned in the EuroNASCAR Finals. Italy’s Gianmarco Ercoli was declared as the overall standings winner after he bested his other title rivals at Circuit Zolder.
However, Gianmarco’s championship triumph was overshadowed by a collision involving his younger brother Mario Ercoli, who collided with Saturday winner Lucas Lasserre in the title deciding race.
Meanwhile, Tobias Dauenhauer had one of the most dominating performances in series history by winning the Sunday race with a gap of 47 seconds to second place. The recap of the races can be checked in the sections below.
Race 1 Recap
The first race of the Finals weekend was due to start at 14:00 CEST, but major drama happened before it even began. The heavens opened up during the pre-race activity intermittently, creating an unpredictable game of “guess the weather”.
After some waiting, a heavy rain shower led everyone to switch their strategy and change to the wet tires on the grid. To facilitate this, the stewards wisely decided to delay the start by 10 minutes and have the race began under the Safety Car.
When the race did get underway on lap 3, pole sitter Paul Jouffreau had a bad launch and got himself overtaken by Giorgio Maggi in the first few corners. The Swiss driver’s lead didn’t last long, however, as a mistake at the Kleine chicane on the next lap gave Jouffreau the lead back.
The young Frenchman soon opened up a 3-second advantage that he held for most of the race, but some drivers were able to catch him up when the track began to dry. One of them is his former team boss Lucas Lasserre, who showed stellar pace in the drying conditions.
Lasserre slowly bid his way past the drivers in front of him before he caught up to the tail end of Jouffreau’s Ford Mustang at the end of lap 14. The veteran piled in the pressure on his former protege, so much so that even RDV Competition mechanics were affected.
As the leaders entered their final lap, RDV mistakenly showed a “two laps to go” sign to Jouffreau. This caused the 19-year old to let his guard down, opening the path for Lasserre to get past on the first corner.
It was a lead that Lasserre would not surrender as the 45-year old fended off Jouffreau’s late challenge to score his second victory of the season. The Finals victory also gave him the lead in the championship, giving him a narrow margin of advantage to Vittorio Ghirelli and Gianmarco Ercoli heading to Sunday’s finale.
“I told you before the race weekend that I’m a lion!” said Lasserre in Victory Lane. “I pushed all the time and I stayed focused. Every day, we work very hard on our driving styles and the setups with my crew.”
“They work so hard, but they do it in a good atmosphere at Speedhouse. It’s important to lead the championship, but it’s more important to be first tomorrow. I had a lot of good fun here, it was a pure NASCAR race on a track where drivers make the difference.”
Jouffreau had to contend with a second-place finish, but he once again took the top spot in the Junior Trophy sub-classification ranks. Maggi was delighted with his podium finish as it marked a return to form after such a horrible season for the Race Art Technology driver.
Tobias Dauenhauer’s fourth place finish will do him good in his bid to win the overall Junior Trophy honors. Fifth is Anthony Kumpen, the Belgian pleasing the home fans with a strong top-5 result after his strategic error during Qualifying.
Ghirelli was struggling with visibility issues and could only finish sixth. It did give him enough points to put him one point behind Lasserre in the standings, which made the Sunday race a must-win one for the Team Bleekemolen driver.
Team Bleekemolen’s team boss Sebastiaan Bleekemolen was seventh ahead of Liam Hezemans, who took the bonus points for most positions gained by climbing up ten places. Ulysse Delsaux and Gianmarco Ercoli complete the top-10 with the latter being absolutely livid towards Lasserre post-race.
The reason for that is because Ercoli and Lasserre made contact during the Safety Car period, causing significant damage towards the No. 54 Chevrolet. Ercoli was adamant that Lasserre had brake checked him, but the stewards decided that no penalty was to be handed to the SpeedHouse owner-driver.
To make matters worse for Ercoli, he only set the 17th fastest lap time during the race, meaning that he will have to start from the ninth row of the grid for the Sunday decider!
Challenger Trophy was led by Thomas Toffel, who scored his third consecutive Trophy win with a 12th place finish. Fabrizio Armetta scored important points in 14th overall while Yevgen Sokolovskiy returned to the sub-classification podium in 17th place.
Dario Caso made a brave gamble to start on the slicks, but he soon discovered that the track was just too wet and had to make an unscheduled tire change. Teammate Mario Ercoli didn’t fare better either, having a mechanical trouble pre-race before his car broke down again after just five laps.
One great bummer is the fact that Marc Goossens was unable to start the race. Sven van Laere’s nasty shunt in Qualifying totaled the Anecars Chevrolet and the No. 56 team was forced to withdraw their entry for the rest of the weekend.
Race 2 Recap
Rain once again arrived for the final showdown of the EuroNASCAR PRO drivers on Sunday. Just like for Saturday’s race, the stewards decided to delay the procedures by 10 minutes and began the race under Safety Car to ensure that everyone can safely take the start.
The green flag was waved on lap 3 with Lucas Lasserre leading the field to the green flag at a slower pace than expected. Nevertheless, the Frenchman kept his lead in the first lap under racing conditions before he gave enough space for Tobias Dauenhauer to pass him on the next lap.
Lasserre continued to play it safe, but still kept enough pace in the No. 64 Ford Mustang to keep him in second place. That is, until he tried to lap Vict Motorsport driver Mario Ercoli on lap 15.
In what can be only described as a highly controversial moment, Mario and Lucas made contact at Bolderberghaarspeldbocht. The collision sent Lasserre into a spin and dropped him to the clutches of Mario’s older brother – and CAAL Racing driver – Gianmarco Ercoli, who had slowly recovered from his lowly 17th place starting position.
Lasserre and Gianmarco finished right next to each other and confusion sank in immediately after. No one knew who got the championship title. What is known is that Lasserre had been spun by Mario and Gianmarco secured the bonus points for most positions gained.
The provisional calculations showed that Gianmarco had won the title by the slimmest of margins. Only one point separated the two contenders provisionally, but it was clear that this was just the start of a lengthy post-race investigation.
A very long investigation took place as race control wanted to make sure that the Ercoli brothers – or their teams CAAL Racing and Vict Motorsport – didn’t collude to give the championship to Gianmarco’s favor.
In the end, three and a half hours after the race ended, it was decided that no one in Gianmarco’s side had an involvement in Lasserre and Mario’s collision. With that, Gianmarco was officially declared as the 2023 NASCAR Whelen Euro Series champion.
With three wins, nine top-5’s and ten top-10 finishes, Gianmarco became the first Italian driver and the first former EuroNASCAR 2 champion to win the top prize in European’s stock car racing.
“Even after the events on Saturday, I knew that this season would be decided today,” said Ercoli after the title was decided. “I just focused on myself and pushed very hard. Before the race, my team bosses Luca and Corrado Canneori as well as the whole team came to me and said: ‘Gimmy, fight! Don’t think and just drive to have fun!’”
“We were unlucky yesterday but today I’m the lucky guy. It’s really important for me personally to have won this EuroNASCAR PRO title and I have no words right now to express my emotions. I thank the whole team for the amazing work during this season.”
While this was going on, Dauenhauer was driving the race of his life. The German was regularly lapping two to three seconds faster than everyone else and by the time he took the checkered flag at the end of lap 18, the Bremotion driver was more than 45 seconds ahead of second place!
To make it even more incredible, Dauenhauer’s total domination nearly didn’t happen had the Bremotion mechanics failed to fix a collapsed suspension that his teammate Eric de Doncker suffered in the preceding EuroNASCAR 2 race.
“I love the rain and the car felt amazing,” says Dauenhauer in the Victory Lane. “It was a tough challenge for us because the car was damaged in a crash in the EuroNASCAR 2 race, but my team managed to fix the car within ten minutes before the start of the race.”
“Many thanks to Bremotion, we had an amazing car and I love these conditions. It’s amazing to see so many fans here and I’m really happy to end the season like this.”
Following behind Dauenhauer are Liam Hezemans and Fabrizio Armetta, two drivers that sealed the overall win in their respective trophies. Liam ran steady at the front and claimed enough points to win the Junior Trophy by six points despite finishing 47.276 seconds behind Dauenhauer.
Armetta, the overall winner of Challenger Trophy, quietly snuck by to fifth position when the checkered flag dropped. However, penalties for Giorgio Maggi and Anthony Kumpen for start procedure infringements promoted Armetta to third, giving him his first podium finish in his eighth season in the sport.
Ercoli, eighth at the line, was promoted all the way to fourth position in the final results. The final spot in the top-5 was filled by Maggi, who survived his 10-second time penalty to claim fifth ahead of Kumpen.
Three EuroNASCAR 2 champions were next with 2021 champion Martin Doubek seventh, ahead of the newly crowned EuroNASCAR 2 champion Paul Jouffreau and 2018 champion Ulysse Delsaux.
In a cruel irony, Lasserre also got a 10-second time penalty because of his own start procedure infringements. The penalty dropped him down to tenth in the final results, meaning that the Frenchman ended his year 15 points behind Gianmarco in the standings.
Ryan Vargas narrowly missed out on the top-10 positions in eleventh and admitted that the vibe in the paddock was “super weird” after the race. However, he is thankful for the opportunity to compete at Zolder.
Yevgen Sokolovskiy, twelfth overall, took second in Legend Trophy ahead of Vittorio Ghirelli, whose title fight ended before it had even begun.
Ghirelli was cruising behind the Safety Car when he inexplicably spun at Sterrenwachtbocht. The Italian was unable to move up the running order as much as Gianmarco did, later revealing that a stuck throttle pedal was the reason for both his spin and lack of pace.
Despite this, Ghirelli still collected enough points to finish third in the overall standings. With 391 points, the driver from Fasano finished 22 points behind Gianmarco.
Controversy man Mario was ultimately classified in 19th as the last car still running. Vladimiros Tziortzis’ car broke down at the Villeneuve chicane with six laps to go while Sebastiaan Bleekemolen’s season ended early after a mechanical problem forced him to park the car at Earste.
Results-wise, Gianmarco Ercoli had a right to say that he deserved to be crowned as the 2023 NASCAR Whelen Euro Series champion. The CAAL Racing driver had the most wins with three, the most pole positions at four, and also the most points with 413 points – 458 counting the dropped ones – scored after twelve races.
However, the way the title is decided will forever cast a shadow on his biggest triumph yet. Mario Ercoli had played such a factor through his collision with Lucas Lasserre that it would lead some people to dispute Gianmarco’s victory, even if it was proven that Mario’s incident was a pure happenstance.
Thus, it is at Gianmarco’s utmost importance to continue to perform at his best and prove to the world that he can win the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series championship title without any outside circumstances in the future.
FINAL 2023 EURONASCAR PRO STANDINGS
Disclaimer: Credits for all photos are listed underneath each image.