08.02.2016

Report by J-P.Huhtala (VRC race reporter)

2016 Season 1 and round 1, Halifax


1:10 electric nascartruck modified started they season from Halifax. Timed practice showed that Finnish talent Viljami Kutvonen had came to participate this season start. He did fantastic result at timed practice and it was well known that he would be even faster at next rounds. At this point his lead was almost three seconds to Huhtala.
At qualifying, French Maxime Favrelle had also joined, and it was magnificent to see and wonder how this event would go, so nice Maxime drove. Kutvonen was only 1.5secomds faster than Favrelle at qualifying. Viljami got that fantastic 18laps result.
Coming to the bump-up and end of it, Kutvonen and Favrelle was gone, and did not participate to the bump-up. This was a pitty, so magnificent driving they had showed and of course it would have been nice to see how good battle they would had.
After those supermans decided not to drive the bump-up, this was ok to Huhtala, who had won the TQ. Expectations for the "battle final" were good, so close Calaprice and Raistrick were.



Start was very intence, from the tone, Italian rocket Ugo Calaprice took his place at lead. Huhtala dropped to second place and race was on. It was well known that final would be very tight between Huhtala , Calaprice and Raistrick. But this could only happened without any mistakes. Calaprice gained his lead little, Raistrick was giving hard time to Huhtala. At this point it looked that Calaprice is going to get this, so nice Ugos pace was, precise and consistent. At lap six, coming to backstraight, Huhtala totally blewed his line to there and went wide , did some hay work and Raistrick passed. Calaprice was leading one second of Raistrick
Few laps later Graham did his mistake at turn eight, went wide and Huhtala said “thank you” of second place. Calaprice`s pace was very nice, but very same lap when Huhtala passed Raistrick, Ugo`s few bad corners dropped his pace a little and Huhtala got very near. Start of the 12th lap it happened, Huhtala pressure against Calaprice had done the work, and guys switch the places at first corner of the lap.



Race between these three drivers were very very close, pace was similar and afterwards only few bad corners and choices resolved this race to Huhtala. Calaprice was giving hard pressure to the leader, but among this “pressure driving”, Ugo did those tiny mistakes and that was it. Graham, who came to third place, was once again fantastic, Like somebody told that he is “clewer driver”, even his car isn’t working as he wants, he know how to get the maximum of it.
Behind these three, starting from place four, was Philippe Gross from Switzerland. Grosses pace was good, but would needed one 10th faster laptimes to challenges the leaders.



Of course he had race also, against Italian Massimiliano Tanturri and Czech Milan Peka. But at the end, Tanturri was 4seconds and Peka 10seconds behind him , when they came to checkered flag. At beginning of the final, it looked that Netherlands Joost Wouters would get Tanturris pace and challenge him of sixth place, but Joost would need few 10th`s faster laps to gain Massimiliano. Massimilianos race was guite hard to watch, as we know what a worldclass driver he is, car looked terrible. But he struggled with that one hole 10minutes and achived 5th place.
Without Kutvonen and Favrelle, we got very good race here in Halifax. This was joyable and fun to watch.

FINAL RESULTS

A Main

1|Jukka-Pekka Huhtala|FI|34|10:07.150 2|Ugo Calaprice|IT|34|10:08.318 3|Graham Raistrick|GB|34|10:09.660 4|Philippe Gross|CH|33|10:00.088 5|Massimiliano Tanturri|IT|33|10:04.192 6|Milan Peka|CZ|33|10:10.782 7|Yuriy Meshkov|RU|32|10:03.762 8|Joost Wouters|NL|32|10:17.456 9|Rodolphe May|FR|31|10:13.184 10|Eric Brawley|GB|DNS
B Main
1|Billy Yeung|HK|33|10:16.788 2|Thomas Klingen|DE|32|10:00.100 3|Hans Guenther Heitsch|DE|32|10:02.826 4|Babak Tizkar|GB|32|10:03.886 5|Jimmy Flack|US|32|10:03.898 6|Rumsey Rammuny|US|32|10:10.410 7|Jonathan Csernak|FR|32|10:18.086 8|Jean-philippe Csernak|FR|31|10:02.722 9|Romain LACROIX|FR|31|10:05.674 10|Johann Jury|AT|30|10:07.792
C Main
1|Heikki Huhtala|FI|33|10:17.808 2|Erwin Fiselberger|AT|32|10:08.190 3|Giovanni Prini|IT|32|10:13.156 4|Mike Bridges|CA|31|10:07.658 5|Lando Landini|IT|31|10:19.312 6|Giovanni F. Di Berardino|BE|30|10:00.224 7|Ciccio Pappalardo|IT|30|10:52.166 8|Kevin Tsang|HK|DNS 9|Andrew Curless|AU|DNS 10|Jacek Wiśniakowski|PL|DNS
D Main
1|Aron Roach|AU|31|10:02.774 2|Marc Van Dyck|BE|30|10:11.762 3|Tom Ebersole|US|30|10:18.508 4|Tony DELMASTRO|FR|29|10:09.892 5|Yasuhiro Morta|JP|29|10:19.394 6|Karl heinz Johann|DE|28|10:04.980 7|Adam Gustafsson|SE|DNS 8|Matthew Carabina|US|DNS 9|Michael Kietz|DE|DNS 10|Sascha Engelhardt|DE|DNS
E Main
1|Henri Vayrette|FR|31|10:19.346 2|Jay Westwood|GB|28|10:11.108 3|Jodie Grein|US|28|10:17.048 4|Gary Climie|CA|27|10:07.230 5|Jean-Michel Ginet|FR|25|10:16.766

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