Paul Jouffreau secured victory in the 2025 EuroNASCAR opener at Valencia after a race long duel with PK Carsport’s dark horse contender Thomas Krasonis.
A thrilling race at Circuit Ricardo Tormo heralded the arrival of the 2025 NASCAR Euro Series season. Spanish fans were treated with a dramatic race that resulted in victory for a driver who called Valencia as their spiritual home track.
Paul Jouffreau, who had Valencia ancestry in his blood, came to Spain with a mission to win in his “home venue”. After four years of trying, the Frenchman finally did so following a hard fought battle with PK Carsport’s Thomas Krasonis.
Starting from pole position, Jouffreau made a perfect launch and cleared his rival Vittorio Ghirelli long before they reached Doohan corner. Krasonis and Yvan Muller soon passed Ghirelli as well, ensuring that the 18-lap race will not be an easy one for the defending champion.
Soon, Jouffreau and Krasonis raced off into the distance. They showed their dominance by regularly lapping half a second faster than anyone else.
However, overtaking was rather difficult for Krasonis. The Greek did not have enough pace to regularly put the No. 13 Costamare Inc. Camaro alongside Jouffreau’s No. 3 Ford.
What Krasonis was able to do, however, is put Jouffreau in full alert mode. The Frenchman has to keep pushing to keep his Greek rival at bay.
Fortunately for Jouffreau, he got a big break in the final few laps. Unbeknownst to Jouffreau, Krasonis have made several track limit violations. Eventually, it got one too many and the Greek was penalized with a 10-second penalty.
With victory secured, Jouffreau eased a little to safely bring his car home. The Frenchman greatly celebrated this win with the Valencia crowd.
His popularity with the Valencia fans even convinced the organizers to give him the Valencian anthem instead of the French national anthem during the podium ceremony.
“It’s really, really nice!” said Jouffreau, also the winner of the Junior Trophy, after the race. “The plan was to exit the first turn in the lead and finish in the lead and we achieved it.”
“Thomas has a really good pace, to be honest. I wanted to manage the pace to save the tires for tomorrow, but Thomas was putting me under pressure. Then, my spotter told me that he had a 10-second penalty.”
“Congratulations to him, it was still a really good race for him and I’m happy to finish the first race in first!”
Krasonis’ performance still deserved plenty of praise in spite of the penalty. The 23-year old really showed why he’s hand picked as Alon Day’s protege in 2024 with his speed.
Such was his pace that he actually finished more than 10 seconds ahead of third place finisher Yvan Muller, who took his first championship podium in the series.
Despite only returning for a one-off, Muller reminded the world why he’s considered as one of the greatest touring car drivers of all time. The Frenchman kept his younger opposition at bay and frustrated them with a great understanding of car control and car positioning.
Muller is adamant that this Valencia appearance is his only plan for 2025. However, he does acknowledge that he “has to improve myself”. Could this be a hint at more on-track opportunities for Muller later in the season? Only time will tell.
Ghirelli is understandably disappointed with fourth place. The Italian is perplexed as to why he did not have the race pace he expected. Liam Hezemans completed the top-5, almost snatching fourth away from the reigning champion.
Sixth went to Garrett Lowe in his first “offline” NASCAR sanctioned race. Lowe immediately fought with some of EuroNASCAR’s best and even kept the 2023 champion Gianmarco Ercoli behind him for the whole race.
Ercoli only finished seventh in a slightly disappointing debut for Alumitec Racing. Vladimiros Tziortzis, Julien Rehberg and Sebastiaan Bleekemolen rounded out the top-10.
The race saw a great deal of attrition with seven retirements. An eighth DNF was avoided when Fabrizio Armetta rejoined the race after making an unscheduled mechanical repair to his No. 55 Dinoil Camaro.
This attrition greatly affected the classification for Challenger Trophy. Only two Challenger Trophy participants finished the race, with 12th place finisher Kenko Miura finishing just ahead of Davit Kajaia for the Trophy win. Claudio Remigio Cappelli got to the Trophy podium by virtue of surviving longer than his other rivals.
EURONASCAR PRO RACE 1 RESULTS
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