De Telegraaf wrote:Røsbjørgen, at last!
Finally, he screamed when he left his Porsche 959 in pit-road. Ståle Øivind Røsbjørgen has won his first event of the season in GBRC, turning into the 5th different winner in 5 events. The norwegian driver won the A-Final ahead of Markus-Petteri Pykalisto and home hero Franck van Nifterick.
In qualifying, Markus-Petteri Pykalisto was back on top, beeing the 3rd time this season the finnish driver has scored the best time in qualifying. He was 0.285 faster than Adil Rehman, a rookie in the series driving a privateerly prepared MR2, and 0.311 than Pierre Deschenes. van Nifterick was 4th fastest, 0.464 down and Røsbjørgen 5th fastest, 0.669 down. Some disappointments in qualifying happened. Riley Griffith was only 21st fastest, a bad result considering she seemed ready to be in the championship fight, and the Citroen's of Daniel Polák and Hamid Barmak we're only 23rd and 22nd fastest respectivelly, with Barmak beating Polák for the first time this season in qualifying. Fernando Costas failed to qualify after a fairly impressive performance in Finland, with Tamerlan Hasanov failing to qualify for the first time this season as well. Sugomari's DNQ marked the first time a Albatross Racing Toyota didn't make the heats this year, with Julia Schilling again struggling against her team-mate. el-Hawami failed to qualify after his first heat win in Finland, and ex-ARWS driver Eric Swerts was only 37th fastest overall.
In the first of the quarter-final heats, we had a 4 way battle for the win, between Christer Malmström, Franck van Nifterick, Sandra Cessler and Massimo Munari. At the start, van Nifterick took the lead, but Malmström chased after him, beeing always close but van Nifterick defended well to take the heat win ahead of the finn. Munari finished 3rd, after passing Cessler in the 7th lap, when the american driver ran wide coming out of the final corner. Both drivers would have to wait for the remainder heats to see if they could get through as lucky dogs. Riley Griffith finished 5th ahead of Barmak, but the american driver was out of the competition. A disappointing performance by her.
Markus-Petteri Pykalisto won the second heat of the QF. Pykalisto seemed on shape, as despite beeing force to start from 5th, he came through the field to win the heat. Røsbjørgen led early on, but then made a mistake at turn 1 and lost 3 places on the trot, going down to 4th, where he would finish. Christian Poulsen finished 2nd and Hahuri Suzumiya once again scored 3rd in her QF heat.
In heat 3, Mika Litmanen made it 3 out of 3 for Lancia cars so far (plus the qualifying victory), winning ahead of Pierre Deschenes. Litmanen led all the way through, and despite Deschenes pushing to catch him, the french man couldn't do it. Bernardo Gonzalez finished 3rd in the heat, with Katie Lea Winter 4th. Lasse Tilkesson once again couldn't clear the QF, finishing only in 5th place.
In the final heat of the quarter-finals, Hilko Leifeld took the win with a breathtaking pass on Jochen Märko around the outside of the final turn. Märko had passed Leifeld down the inside the previous lap at the hairpin, but the german driver was able to repass him into the final corner to take the heat win. Adil Rehman scored 3rd, and had to wait for the review of the overall times to see if he passed into the SF. Daniel Polák scored 4th, and was, for the first time this season, out in the QF.
The lucky dogs ended up beeing 3rd and 4th place of the first two heats, which we're considerably faster than the final two. That meant Massimo Munari, Sandra Cessler, Hahuri Suzumiya and Ståle Øivind Røsbjørgen we're through into the Semi-Finals.
In the first of the semi-finals, Mika Litmanen was able to take the win after taking the lead in the final lap of the race, ahead of Massimo Munari. The last driver to be qualified for the A-Final was dutch hero Franck van Nifterick, who was showing promising pace. Christer Malmström seemed to have a shoe-in into the A-Final, but then let the car oversteer wide coming out of turn 1 and was forced to take evasive maneuvers not to crash, and went down to 4th place, where he finished. Cessler finished 5th and championship challenger Hilko Leifeld scored 6th.
Pykalisto led all the way through into the second semi-final to take the win, ahead of Ståle Øivind Røsbjørgen, who despite beeing close throughout the heat, couldn't get close enough to the finnish driver to challenge him. Pierre Deschenes scored 3rd and was through into the A-Final as well. Christian Poulsen scored 4th, with Jochen Märko scoring 5th. Suzumiya's engine failed, so she finished 6th.
In the B-Final, Malmström took a calm and relaxed drive to take the win. He started from 2nd place, and cleared Märko fairly quickly, going on to defend from Suzumiya throughout the race, but overall, was never challenged for the win. Suzumiya scored a surprising 2nd place, her best result so far in the series. Championship contender Hilko Leifeld scored 3rd, which depending on how Deschenes did in the A-Final, was a good result to keep him in the fight. Jochen Märko secured 4th place for Trueba, ahead of Poulsen and Cessler, who disapointed quite a lot in this B-Final. A chance wasted for the american talent to score her first win in the series.
But, obviously, the biggest event of the day is always the A-Final. Pykalisto was drawn on pole and seeing his performances at the time, the finnish driver could've been set to take the victory. A great start from Massimo Munari saw the italian take the lead, and what it seemed like Munari would finally be able to take the fight to the best driver, heart-break for the italian driver. The engine on his Lancia Delta S4 failed, and he stopped in the middle of the final corner. This mean Pykalisto, Litmanen and van Nifterick had to break hard, which helped Røsbjørgen, on the outside line through that final corner, took the lead! Deschenes moved into 2nd with that, and Pykalisto dropped to 3rd. van Nifterick and Litmanen lost 10 seconds with this, and during the chase, van Nifterick set what was the fastest lap of the weekend, grabbing the bonus point. Pykalisto chased back Deschenes, who was now on the back of Røsbjørgen. Røsbjørgen defended quite well, and Pykalisto and Deschenes traded places until the french driver made a mistake and dropped back. He fell into the claws of van Nifterick who passed him, and was latter passed by Litmanen, finishing 5th. Disappointing. Up front, Pykalisto pressured Røsbjørgen, but the norwegian driver didn't flinch and took the win, his first win in the series at last. Pykalisto finished 2nd, and van Nifterick send the dutch crowd wild by finishing 3rd. Litmanen finished 4th and Deschenes 5th, with a emotional Munari finishing 6th, questioning what could've been.
This mean that Pykalisto was back in the championship lead! The finn is on 80 points, 6 more than Deschenes and 10 more than Leifeld. Røsbjørgen is 4th, 15 points behind the finn, with Griffith and Malmström beeing 27 points behind Pykalisto.
In the teams championship, Trueba increased the lead to Globex Scorpio Racing, with the italian squad led by Giovanni Roda now having 217 points versus the 179 that Globex have, with USD having 115 points, and sit in 3rd place. ADAC Norbayern are 4th, on 69 points, with KQ Motor Sports 5th with 53 points.
In the constructors championship, Porsche only have 7 points of advantage to Trueba now, 114 versus 117, with Austin sitting in 3rd with 72 points, double the ammount of 4th placed, Citröen. Ferrari are 5th, and Ford 6th.
The next round of the Group B Rallycross Championship is in Czech Republic, in the Autodrom Sosnová, in the weekend of 1-2 September.
Qualifying Results:1 PYKALISTO Markus-Petteri 0:36.752
2 REHMAN Adil +0.285
3 DESCHENES Pierre +0.311
4 VAN NIFTERICK Franck +0.464
5 RØSBJØRGEN Ståle Øivind +0.669
6 LITMANEN Mika +0.807
7 POULSEN Christian +1.049
8 MUNARI Massimo +1.448
9 MALMSTRÖM Christer +1.459
10 CESSLER Sandra +1.840
11 LEIFELD Hilko +2.467
12 GONZALEZ Bernardo +2.582
13 SUZUMIYA Hahuri +2.598
14 MANUEL Rhoda +3.032
15 MÄRKO Jochen +3.175
16 ALBURQUEQUE Josué +3.497
17 TILKESSON Lasse +3.530
18 LEA WINTER Katie +3.536
19 LOMAS Bob +3.793
20 HARRIS Kelly +4.096
21 GRIFFITH Riley +4.194
22 BARMAK Hamid +4.547
23 POLÁK Daniel +4.577
24 PAUL Henry +4.673
25 COSTAS Fernando +4.825
26 HASANOV Tamerlan +5.288
27 GRÜNEWALD Florian +5.546
28 SUGOMARI Outomo +5.862
29 SCHILLING Julia +5.978
30 KIRBY Mark +6.387
31 WESTERNBERG Thomas +6.491
32 BENEŠ Andrej +6.539
33 POOLE Pedro +6.719
34 NICOLAU Helios +7.023
35 CLARK Ross +7.318
36 JORDANOVIC Goran +7.608
37 Eric Swerts +7.970
38 GRAYSON-DRAKE Jason +7.976
39 EL-HAWAMI Saheeh +8.223
40 DENGIILEI Hatohobei +8.233
41 GRIFFITH Shad +8.410
42 BOSEVIC Anton +8.808
43 DE HONK Monk De Wally +8.937
44 EDWARDS Barry +9.254
45 DESCHENES Jean-Francois +10.093
46 JOVANOVIC Nikola +11.009
47 ZIEGLER Alvin +11.143
48 COLOMBO Giuseppe +11.206
49 BOURNE Simon +11.275
50 MARCELLI Antonio +11.323
51 JUN-SEO Shoi +11.753
52 VLAHOVIC Jozo +11.969
Quarter-Finals:Heat 1Heat 2Heat 3Heat 4Semi-Finals:Heat 1Heat 2Finals:B-FinalA-FinalChampionship standings will be posted during the course of the next month. I'll notify when they are updated.
Entries for Czech Republic are opened until the 4th of March, until midnight.