EuroNASCAR 2’s Alberto Naska is crowned as the first champion of the all-European EuroLegend Cup after he scored enough points to beat his rivals in the season finale at Misano.
EuroNASCAR 2 regular Alberto Naska has earned his first championship in stock car racing after the Italian was crowned as the inaugural EuroLegend Cup champion in the series’ season finale at Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli on the 11-12 November weekend.
The Italian YouTube superstar collected enough points in Misano to win the title with a total of 534 points, 13 points ahead of Luigi Masselli. Fellow EuroNASCAR 2 competitor Claudio Remigio Cappelli ended the year in third with 510 points followed by Alessandro Bollini and Simone Giussani in fourth and fifth respectively.
The EuroLegend Cup is an all-European legends car series inaugurated in 2023 that aims to provide drivers with an affordable stepping stone to the world of stock car racing.
The champion of the inaugural season will be given the opportunity to register for the next EuroNASCAR season for free, while the opportunity to test the EuroNASCAR stock cars are presented to those that finished second and third in the overall standings.
The series acted as the primary supporting event for the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series and planned to support EuroNASCAR in five of the six rounds held this year, but they sadly failed to earn the permit to race at Oschersleben and Zolder.
Thus, Misano served as a replacement for the canceled Oschersleben and Zolder rounds. Labeled as the #LEGENDaryFinal round, it featured five races in a span of just two days – split into three races on a normal Misano round and two races in the “Grand Final” – to determine the first ever all-European legends car champion in history.
A total of 23 cars are entered for the regular round, with ten of the twelve registered full-season contestants competing alongside 13 wildcard drivers. Most of them came from Italy’s local legends car scene, but it also featured the addition of Race Art Technology’s Thomas Toffel and Edouard Fatio.
The first race was won by Davide Gaggianesi, who beat Rosario Messina by 2.4 seconds to score his second victory of the season. Cappelli completed the podium while Toffel and Fatio finished eighth and thirteenth respectively.
Naska did not finish the race, with the official reasoning being listed as a mechanical issue. However, according to Naska himself, he was forced to retire due to issues with his onboard camera.
Naska was given a meatball flag to remove his onboard camera, but he was unable to do so as it was clamped to the rollcage of his machine. This led to his retirement so that it can be removed for the next race.
Nevertheless, the 33-year old was able to discard the result from his final tally as he still had a “joker” available for him to use.
Gaggianesi continued his winning ways with a back-to-back victory in Race 2, but this time Naska finished second. Only 0.438 seconds separated the two Italians with Masselli a further 12 seconds behind.
Cappelli and Fatio were only able to finish in ninth and seventeenth while Toffel retired due to mechanical issues.
Naska and Gaggianesi’s battle continued in Race 3. Both drivers were set to finish 1-2 again when Gaggianesi clipped Naska on the final lap, allowing Bollini to sneak by and win the race.
Messina and Masselli also took advantage of the incident by grabbing a podium finish, relegating Naska and Gaggianesi to fourth and fifth respectively. Cappelli was sixth while Toffel and Fatio came home ninth and eighteenth.
The ten full-season drivers then took part in the Grand Final round, but drama immediately struck when Messina’s car experienced a terminal mechanical issue that forced him to sit out of Race 4. Victory went to the way of Masselli with Bollini and Cappelli rounding out the podium positions.
Naska was only fourth, but luck was on his side. Gaggianesi’s car suffered a mechanical problem that forced him to retire. The problem that the 39-year old driver experienced was severe enough that he was unable to take part in Race 5, putting Naska in the prime position to capture the title.
In the end, a podium finish in Race 5 was enough for Naska to seal his status as the first EuroLegend Cup champion. It was a closely contested race between him, Cappelli and Bollini that went all the way to the wire, with Cappelli coming out on top by just 0.085 seconds from Bollini.
The championship victory in EuroLegend Cup provided Naska with a sweet way to end his racing season after the calamity that he suffered in the final races of this year’s EuroNASCAR 2 season.
For Masselli, his runner-up finish gave him a chance to test the EuroNASCAR cars for the first time in his career. The test presents Masselli with the possibility to show his skills at an international stage if one of the competing teams showed an interest to sign him for the upcoming 2024 season.
EuroLegend Cup will be returning in 2024 with five rounds scheduled. The series will be supporting EuroNASCAR at Valencia, Vallelunga, Venray and Most while a standalone round at Croatia’s Automotodrom Grobnik is tentatively listed to be held at an unknown date.
Disclaimer: Credits for all photos are listed underneath each image.
Last Updated: 14 March 2024
Naska has just posted a video about Race 1. Apparently he was called in with the meatball flag to remove his camera from the roof, which he couldn’t do since it was clamped to the rollcage via steel cable. No mechanical issues – the only explanation is that race direction were interested in making the competition look bad.
Ah, thank you very much for telling us about it! We will update the information presented in the article as soon as we can.