Clean Sweep for Strawberry
Last weekends (20/21 July) third and penultimate round of the Euro Max Challenge at PFi saw Strawberry Racings drivers take podiums in the DD2, Senior and Junior classes.
Andreas Backman - the teams sole representative in the DD2 category - gave a great account of himself by taking 3rd in the main final. It marked his best result in the championship this year and comes off the back of a string of excellent performances in the BNL series.
Andreas built on a terrific qualifying performance, in which he posted the 2nd-fastest lap time, to claim 6th and 2nd-place finishes in his two heats. Such is the closeness of the standard in DD2, that this was only good enough to earn him p13 on the grid for the pre-final. Demonstrating the pace hed shown throughout the preliminaries, the Swede went on to finish 5th before going on to claim his maiden Euro Max podium in the main final.Whilst it made for spectacular viewing to the large crowd and TV audience at home, much of the racing in Senior Max was marred by incidents. It was all a bit crash, bang, wallop observed Ringham. Many of the drivers were using their front brakes to go in hard and late on their rivals, rather than the corners.
The inevitable melee in the final put-paid to the teams chances of adding to their encouraging heat and pre-final results. Harry Webb had topped the intermediate ranking and netted 3rd in the pre-final, with team-mate Charlie Eastwood 4th. Kyle Fowlie had made up ground to go from 13th on the grid to 7th, setting him up for another strong race in the second final.In contrast, Harry and Charlie would complete the weekend as spectatorsvictims of crashes. Max Aitkens debut as a Senior was also frustrated by a DNF. Lifting the teams spirits was Kyles richly deserved runner-up finish in the main final. He likes to make you sweat a bit, joked Warwick after Kyle had set himself an uphill task following qualifying and the heats. We gave him a bit of a talking-to and that fired him up for the finals. He certainly saved the best til last and drove really well.
Guan Yu Zhou led Connor Hall home for a Strawberry 1-2 in the Junior final. The pair had been in fine form throughout, but Connor was given a scare in the pre-final, recovering to 15th after being knocked off the circuit. Jai Nijjar enjoyed an impressive two days of competition with the Tony Kart team to figure well inside the top ten at every stage. He capped his weekend with 4th in the final. Thomas Issa narrowly missed out on a top ten finish with his eventual 11th with Finley Hutchinson and Darren Keane crossing the finishing line 14th and 15th respectively. Juri Vips earned Warwicks praise, but was unable to finish higher than 22nd in the main final. Argentinas Nicolas Dapero European debut showed just how tough the competition in the heartland of Max racing is, but he gained valuable experience with the championship leaders. Omar had shown real speed, but was another victim of the frequent crashes.
Summing up the teams fortunes, Warwick said: Im happy but it could all end in tears at the final round (in Salbris 6/8 September). Connor and Guan Yu are tied at the top of the table, if you consider dropped rounds, so it will be winner-takes-all in France. Similarly, I think Charlie and Harry are first and second when dropped scores are considered, so theres every chance it could all be fantastic or go horribly wrong. For now though, weve had a good haul of results really and with Andreas podium, we have to be satisfied with our achievements.
