August 02, 2018

 

Alex Siebel took his sixth win of the season ahead of Jarl Teien, the win being earned by the man who did the least amount of mistakes in a race where everyone did in the changing conditions.
Qualifying was set to be an interesting scene even in the dry, as it was an unknown who had improved the most during the long summer break. A minute into the session however, rain started coming down and the grid would be determined by who exited the pits first.

The ACR Zakspeed cars of Risto Kappet and Alex Siebel had stormed out of the pits first, anticipating the rain and were rewarded with the first two positions on the timetable in return. Siebel got pole position by 0.7s from Kappet despite being second on the road, however Kappet did his time on the medium tyres, planning an alternate strategy due to serving a back-of-the-grid penalty.

Next drivers over the grid were Kasdorp, Teien, Jordan, Eyres, Francic, Brljak, Brewer and Fidock. Although the grid was not too much upset, the gap to P15 was already five seconds, as the track was soaked in minutes.

This led to a completely wet race start, controlled by Alex Siebel who could control the pace in clear air as the other 27 cars had to navigate extremely dense rainspray.

This race was a showdown between the two bottom teams in the standings - Madcape and Red Bull Streetfighter, who both had signed new drivers, Brewer and Francic, to push themselves out of the relegation zone.

Francic seemed to be the early winner, jumping to P4 on the opening lap, but Brewer was not more than few positions away as the grid got off to a relatively clean start.
Rain stopped mid way through the first stint and from then on it was a race of bold calls as there were huge gains for those who could judge the first change to intermediates the best, and then the same on to slicks.

Kappet was the first onto intermediates and found himself net P5 after the next round of pitstops, already battling and overtaking eventual P3 finisher Jordan after the next stop onto slicks, but his great pace was undone by many spins and mistakes to eventually finish P6.

Teien made his way past Kasdorp and started pressuring Siebel for the win. In the last stints on slicks, both drivers made mistakes on the narrow dry line and for a moment, Teien seemed to be in with a chance, before making a mistake himself, eventually finishing 10 seconds behind the winner Siebel.

Jordan earned another podium with a very controlled drive, benefiting from mistakes around him and never being late on the call for tyres with less grooves. Brljak sealed another good result for Edge in P4, making a decent recovery after making several mistakes himself early in the race.

Daniel Brewer earned everyones driver of the day, netting P5 for the madcape car. He mirrored the style of Jordan, keeping his car firmily on the ideal line and letting others do the mistakes.

Early frontrunner Kasdorp finished only P7 after many mistakes in the end of the race and new Evolution signee Jannick Bock impressed by battling through to P8.
Biggest losers of the race were EVAL and Epic with double DNFs, with Geoffrey Fournier blowing his fresh engine just as he started making progress up the field.

Power levels remain unchanged in the top of teams championship as Edge seal themselves as the title contenders against ACR Zakspeed with Teien and Brljak now holding P3 and P4 in the drivers standings aswell.

Next race will be held at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in two weeks.