Campionato europeo EFRA

Ecco un breve ma chiarissimo report del campionato europeo "B" 1/8 offroad appena concluso.

Editors Note - The "B" Euros are open to any driver not having finished in the top 50 of the preceeding 2 "A" Euros



Under slightly darker skies than seen for the rest of the weekend, winners of the two Semi finals Micha Widmaier and Thomas Musso led the field away from their respective P1 and P2 grid slots, with the battle for the European B Championship win around the very bumpy ABC Réding circuit quickly distilling into a battle between these two. Musso took an early lead and quickly established a 4 second gap, but as the leaders started encountering traffic Widmaier was able to reduce the gap and appeared to have the faster car.

Both drivers took their first fuel stops at the 7.5 minute mark, and such was their pace advantage over the rest of the field they rejoined still in P1 and P2, both taking turns at the front of the field as small mistakes and backmarkers affected their speed. Widmaier still seemed to have a pace advantage over Musso, but was making mistakes more frequently, the faster laps of the German being cancelled out by the consistency of the Monaguesque driver. 

A mistake during the middle stages of the race sent Widmaier down the pit lane six minutes into a stint, so rather than losing time driving through his pit crew took the opportunity to refuel him at that point. This would mean that he would need one extra short stop towards the end of the run, so he set about building the lead of around eight seconds he'd need to make up the extra stop from Musso.

Musso was able to relax slight safe in the knowledge that as long as he could keep Widmaier in his sights, the need to do one less stop was likely to present him with an unassailable lead towards the latter stages of the race. Unfortunately, a drive through penalty for Musso for an unsafe release into the path of another car during the stop cancelled out the advantage he had gained, so with one stop each remaining Widmaier now had a five second advantage. He pressed home his superior pace, just making the line before the tone to give himself a victory lap. Musso came across the line in a well deserved second place with qualifying pacesetter Vincent Meertins occupying the final podium position.