22.03.2016
Reported by Tony Dugan
Naxos held round 5 of the 2016 season 1 electric buggy race. 15 year old Uwe De Zwart from Austria and Dan Phillion from Canada were the top two qualifiers at a very demanding and unforgiving track. Qualifying third was none other than the Swedish sensation, Robert "I'm on top of the " Hillman. Dan and Robert are standing one and two respectively in the 2016 official season standing with Tommaso Andreuccetti, 33 from Italy, holding on to the 3rd position.
During the first few laps, the top few racers remained within striking distance with average lap times between 37-38 seconds. A mistake by Zwart at the finish line ending lap 4 made for a higher than average time on lap 5. While Zwart was being marshalled at the start of lap 5, Hillman caught Zwart and was leading heading down the straight away in front of the drivers stand. Oddly enough, Zwart and Hillman both hand their slowest lap on lap 5 and fastest lap on lap 7. Once Zwart had the lead, he started putting down fast laps including the only sub 37 second laps of the race. He did this 3 times which is how he gained his lead. While Uwe was fast, Hillman was as steady as my grandpa's old work truck. He ran consistent lap after consistent lap only making the real mistake on the aforementioned lap 5. Once the race had hit the half way point, it was down to mainly those two drivers and the 41 year old Canadian, Dan Phillion. As the race went on, Phillion looked to have the skill and ability to race with the best but having to be marshalled in laps 3,4 and 12 cost him valuable time that was difficult to make up at the pro level. Phillion did keep pushing clocking his fastest lap (37.3s) with only two laps remaining but it just wasn't to be and he finished an easy 3rd. The last two battled it out and at the line, only .5 seconds separated first and second.
Possibly the best battle was between Schafer, Andreuccetti and Arizzi. Arizzi had two lines that no one else was taking but during my viewing of the race, I am not sure they were consistently faster although if executed perfectly, Arizzi was a bit faster when he took those aggressive lines. I think it is likely that one of these guys will see the podium in the near future.
Matthias Steininger, Carson Yeung, Rémi Pernollet all finished in the A-mail in the pro class which is very good. Matthias ran a very consistent race except for two laps that cost him over 14 seconds. Stuart Mahon qualified 9th but was unable to make it to the race.
Whoops. I almost forgot. I was eating a cookie. Anyway, Zwart and Hillman literally came down to the wire. With only a few seconds to go in the race, Zwart had to be marshalled stopping all of his momentum and allow steady Dan to run wheel to wheel towards the finish line. The image above shows one of their final hurdles. They both left the peak of the jump within milliseconds of each other. At the end, Zwart crossed the line less than 6 tenths of a second before Hillman. What a great race between the two true professionals.
The final results were:
1) Zwart
2) Hillman
3) Phillion
4) Schäfer
5) Andreuccetti
6) Arizzi
7) Matthias Steininger
8) Carson Yeung
9) Rémi Pernollet
In the sport class, the results were as followed:
1) Cyrille Payet
2) Michael Lightfoot
3) Jim Merritts
4) Sean Krause
5) Peter Haaima
6) Wolfgang Hoffelner
7) Christian Mueller
8) Mattias Noren
9) Flemming Hanson
10) DNS
In the club class, results are as followed:
1) Vincent Bidet
2) Joel Lindeborg
3) Philippe Gross
4) Ralf Schiestel
5) Christophe DELAMARE
6) Daniele Tarsi
7) Anders Larsson
8) Renaud Gimelle
9) Mario Koolmees
10) Gavin Powell
BTW: This is my first report. I do not know if I did anything right, much less everything. If something is missing, let me know. I made a video but I had issues posting it. I intend to make videos and take pictures on each class. I want everyone to feel like racing here, getting better individually and the reports I write are fair to everyone. Sorry I could not get the video to work. I only work for me and food.
Comments
Only active members can post comments
(Total posts: 10)
