Race Art Technology won the first round of EuroNASCAR’s new Endurance Teams Championship, leaving both the team and lead driver Thomas Toffel happy with their results in Valencia.
Race Art Technology leaves the 2024 season opening round in Spain with a major silverware in their hands after they secured the top spot in the Endurance Teams Championship, EuroNASCAR’s new format for their teams title.
The new format classified teams based on aggregate results from all EuroNASCAR PRO and EuroNASCAR 2 races of the weekend and in the Valencia NASCAR Fest, Race Art came out on top after they beat Race Planet Team Bleekemolen and SpeedHouse Racing in the combined times.
With an aggregate time of 1:58.09.004, the Swiss team was more than 40 seconds ahead of Bleekemolen’s No. 72 Race Planet Toyota Camry. The Bleekemolen squad narrowly beat SpeedHouse for second, leading the No. 33 Sud-Ouest Remorques Ford team by just 1.215 seconds.
“The first place in the Endurance Teams Championship represents a big satisfaction and great goal for us,” said Race Art’s team manager Paola Pellò on the Valencia triumph.
“All the team worked strongly with Thomas [Toffel] during the winter to test the car, setups and various modifications towards many kilometers. Our job was awarded with this new cup so we are very happy.”
“We have surely to improve various aspects but we will try to make it with even more desire and determination. We can count on a driver that’s serious and smart, eager to grow in this series, then we have all the papers in order to obtain other great satisfactions.”
The man of the hour for Race Art is Thomas Toffel, who easily had his best EuroNASCAR round to date. Not only did the Swiss driver help his team to win the Teams classification, he also completely swept the results in Challenger Trophy.
The 33-year old driver, who ran double duty onboard the No. 34 SIMATOK Chevrolet, is satisfied with the overall weekend but notes that he still has room for improvement.
“Concerning the overall result of the weekend, I’m really very satisfied, mainly with this first place in the Endurance Teams Championship, that shows that we had the fastest car in the cumulative result of the 4 races,” said Toffel, who is currently sixth and third in the ENPRO and EN2 standings respectively.
“This represents super consistency throughout the weekend, which was my biggest drawback of the 2023 season with a lot of crashes and other problems. I thank my team for the great work done which allowed us to obtain this great result.”
“Personally, I am partially satisfied with the results because I was not able to manage my pace well in all of the races. By that I mean that my pace dropped too much between the start of the races and from the tenth lap. So I have to work on this point with my team for the next championship events.”
As things stand, Race Art currently leads the Endurance Teams Championship with 40 points. The No. 72 Bleekemolen and No. 33 SpeedHouse teams were followed by CAAL Racing and Vict Motorsport, who brought the No. 88 and No. 8 teams to fourth and fifth.
VALENCIA ENDURANCE TEAMS CHAMPIONSHIP RESULTS
Disclaimer: Credits for all photos are listed underneath each image.