April 30, 2015

 

This week, the fifth round of the GPVWC Supercup Championship, was held at the Istanbul park circuit in Turkey.
Following a strong result in the World Sports Series, Risto Kappet was feeling strong in track knowledge, but still fighting off illness which naturally affected him. Ruud Heesterbeek, sitting at the top of the standings was also feeling confident, and in fine fettle ahead of the two tough races.

With the championship hotting up, and tough as ever, the team headed into qualifying.

Qualifying Result
7th Ruud Heesterbeek
20th Risto Kappet

7th placed Heesterbeek said "I lacked pace in qualifying, and my fastest lap was only good enough for 7th on the grid. I was a bit disappointed by that result but I thought I would be able to move forward in the race, because my race pace was quite good".

With a disappointing 20th position on the starting grid, Kappet said "This was most likely the worst qualifying result of my life! I was still battling with very exhaustive illness, and my practice was embarrassing, because I had none of the usual energy to drive. This meant I was a second off pace and 0.5s off my PB in the practice!"

Race 1 Result
3rd Ruud Heesterbeek
15th Risto Kappet

Finishing on the podium yet again, Ruud said "I don't think I made up a lot of places at the start. I was stuck in a train of battling cars in the opening laps and lost chunks of time to the race leaders already. After a couple of laps I made my way past Van der Voort and Gaczella (the last one letting me by, so thank you for that), which put me in third place. The gap to the leaders was more than 5 seconds and it stayed like that for the majority of the race. Only in the end when De Vries and Siggy started battling for P1 I was able to close in on them, but I didn't have enough pace to really threaten them and finished in third".

Risto Kappet fought his way up the field, to finish 15th, he said "I gained many positions with my start, but most of the race I was pushing, doing qualifying laps, meaning I was still well out of the groove and suffering midpack. It was a very long race for me! At least I kept it on track".


Race 2 Result
2nd Ruud Heesterbeek
8th Risto Kappet

His second podium of the evening, Heesterbeek said "In Race 2 I started from 7th place again and kept out of trouble in the opening laps. I slowly made my way through the field until I got stuck behind Francic. He had such good straight line speed that I never had a chance to make a move on him in the braking zones. I had the move done once but he easily took me back the next lap on the long straight. With two laps to go I finally got passed him and with De Vries and Hoekstra pressuring Francic I could pull away from the group. I was in third now and closing in rapidly on Muscat in 2nd. I made the overtake in the last corner of the last lap and finished in 2nd"

Finshing in 8th, the best result of his evening, Risto said "Again I had a great start and the race went a bit better too, slowly I was getting some energy for driving, and had a great race with Menno Klont. With good tyres, I got quite a respectable position in the end"!

Championship Standings
1st Ruud Heesterbeek 164pts
7th Risto Kappet 74pts

With Walk Racing leading the team championship with 238 points, 16 points ahead of the next team.

We spoke with our drivers and management after the race for their thoughts.

Ruud Heesterbeek, Championship Leader - "Overall I think we can be happy about the results. I struggled a bit with the car on this track, so it was all about damage limitation. I only lost two points from my championship lead, so it is still looking good. We didn?t lose many points to our rivals in the teams championship either, which is good considering Risto wasn't 100% fit".

Risto Kappet - "Overall I am very sad that my trend of improving in this series ended, but I'm working hard to get myself into perfect condition and then I will definatley compensate this result. Then again I have no idea what Monaco can bring! Also great job to Ruud again for the stable team points, I definitely peformned under the team standard today so good that he keeps saving our ass!"

Team Boss Mr C - ""again good points for the team and have to give massive thanks to Ruud for his consistency but even more praise to Risto, last week he was very ill but still wanted to race so big thank you,great work from the guys".

The next race is next Wednesday from the Monaco Grand Prix circuit. Broadcasting is available on the GPVWC.com website and full analysis will be available here on walkracing.com before and after the race.