A first corner incident and a late retirement left Vladimiros Tziortzis with a considerable deficit heading to the EuroNASCAR Playoffs in Oschersleben and Zolder.
Vladimiros Tziortzis is pondering on what could’ve happened as an accident and a late retirement prevented him from scoring better results in the 2025 NASCAR GP Czech Republic.
Tziortzis entered the round at Autodrom Most with a goal of maintaining his run of top-10 finishes. The Cypriot is aware that consistency will pay its dividends heading to the NASCAR Euro Series Playoff races at Oschersleben and Zolder.
Things did not get off to a good start, though, as poor Practice results in the one dry session left Tziortzis in Group 1 for Saturday’s Qualifying.
Tziortzis put up a solid fight, but it came up short. Fabrizio Armetta’s late charge bumped the driver of the No. 64 HTFX Ford Mustang out of the Superpole session.
“I was in the first group, which has a disadvantage, as the track is better for the second,” said Tziortzis, whose best time of 1:42.085 was just 0.014 seconds shy of Vittorio Ghirelli’s best.
“I managed and recorded the tenth best time, but in the last ten seconds, Armetta left me out of the Superpole top ten.”
The race that followed didn’t go smoothly either. Contact with Claudio Remigio Cappelli – who started right behind Tziortzis – left the 28-year old with damage that greatly impacted his results. He ultimately finished 15th, the worst result of his 2025 season so far.
“The No 5 took me off the track in the first corner and with severe damage I fell quite far behind,” said Tziortzis in his post-race press release.
“I managed to finish, but it is a result that we automatically subtracted from the overall score as it’s mandatory for every driver to remove the worse result before the Semi-Finals.”
Sunday was shaping up to be Tziortzis’ return to form, as he fought for the top-10 positions from 18th place on the grid. An attrition-filled race left Tziortzis in ninth, but then the rear suspension broke down with just two laps to go.
“I managed to climb up to ninth place, despite the major damage I had,” notes the Cypriot driver. “I was ninth and had an extra four points in my pocket [for the most positions gained points] when the rear suspension betrayed me 1.5 laps before the end, which resulted in me not being able to continue.”
With no top-10 results at Most, Tziortzis was relegated down to 11th in the championship standings. He will therefore enter the Playoffs with a considerable 64 points deficit to co-championship leaders Gianmarco Ercoli and Vittorio Ghirelli.
“We achieved a strong points gain that keeps me in contention for the top positions,” concludes Tziortzis. “Things could have gone a little better, but it’s still a good weekend. There’s so many accidents by the rivals that could have easily taken us out of contention.”
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