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Season 47, Week 8, Division 2.4, Alpenring, Test Week

Pirate Panda Race fill the Alpenring timing sheet, which tells you everything and nothing

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

There was no race this week, which in Division 2.4 counts as a rare weekend without a fuel-related incident. What there was instead was a test session at the Alpenring, a circuit that eats tyres for breakfast and leaves the stopwatch looking hungover. Pirate Panda Race decided to occupy most of the sheet anyway.

R. Tito set the fastest time of the week, a 1:54.079 over 27 laps, and was quickest in all three sectors while doing it. Directly behind him, 0.109s adrift, sat a new name in Panda colours: Linwood Jelley, signed from Fenninger. For Fenninger it is another driver walking out of the door. Bad times for Lukas.

For scale: the quickest test lap anyone has set at the Alpenring this season is T. Østerbø’s 1:52.549 for ATMI Racing in Division 2.2. Tito’s time is the best in Division 2.4 and 11th across all divisions, 1.530s down. B. Hallikäär, now at Renttu Racing in Division 1, sits three tenths ahead of his old team-mate on 1:53.779, and Jelley’s 1:54.187 is identical to the mark N. Kudra set for Arrows in Division 2.2.

The more awkward reading of the sheet starts in third. J. Skog Tømmervik, under contract in the feeder series, completed 52 laps and finished 1.029s off Tito. Alejandro Estrada Ojeda completed the same 52 laps and finished 1.342s off, a little over three tenths behind the feeder driver and slower in every sector. Estrada Ojeda has already been moved to the test driver role after a lack of pace, and this week’s numbers did nothing to argue against the decision. When the junior in the identical programme is quicker everywhere, conversations about the future tend to get shorter.

The rest of the Panda contingent was made up of guest drivers, and the sheet was polite about them without being impressed. R. Galić was best of them in seventh, 1.945s down, followed by H. Abekawa in ninth and O. Fomenko in tenth. L. d’Angelo, R. Bottas and J. Thompson finished 13th, 14th and 17th, the last of them 3.643s off the pace. Ten Panda drivers, ten of the top 17 places, and the first car from another team, R. Satyanarayana’s Leleux, in fifth.

Whether any of that means anything is another matter. Pirate Panda’s ten drivers managed 285 laps between them. Tycoon R. INC.’s two cars managed 878. Short runs and pretty numbers, or simply a team that did not need the mileage. Test sheets have never been sworn statements.

Philip E., team principal of Pirate Panda Race, took a few questions.

Murray Ledger: Philip, the first half of the season. How would you sum it up?

Philip E.: Little mistakes. Every week a little mistake, and every little mistake ends in a disaster. You run out of fuel on lap ten, that is not a strategy, that is comedy. Nobody in our garage is laughing, though.

ML: And the second half? Is there still something to fight for?

PE: Fight, yes. Win, I don’t know. Maybe it gets close between second and fourth. Maybe. But there are a lot of buts. A lot. I could give you the list, but you would need more paper.

ML: You top the test sheet with half the team. Should anyone read anything into it, or is this sandbagging the other way round?

PE: Sandbagging? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s a test, Murray. If I tell you, it’s not sandbagging anymore, it’s a press release.

ML: Linwood Jelley joins from Fenninger. How did that come about?

PE: Great that Linwood joins the team, really great. Sure, Lukas could have offered him a contract as well. He didn’t. So we say thank you.

ML: Thank you to Linwood or to Lukas?

PE: Both. Lukas especially.

Season 47, Week 7, Division 1, Fürst (race 5 of 10)

Napizia survives the one-lap shootout as Renttu turn bad grid slots into a double podium

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Nicholai Bech Napizia had the race won with six laps to go. Then Glenn Cassuto's JP Suave Racing car came apart on lap 43, the safety car came out, an 8.5-second lead disappeared behind it, and Fürst ended in a one-lap sprint with six cars covered by less than three and a half seconds. Napizia kept the door shut, took the flag 1.035 seconds ahead of Bilal Hallikäär and gave Silver Cosmos a first win of the season. The more telling result came right behind: Renttu Racing, starting seventh and twentieth, finished second and third.

A wet track for qualifying produced a grid that looked nothing like the championship table. Ross Walrond put the Handbrake RD on pole with a 2:42.987, purple in all three sectors, only 0.064 seconds ahead of Napizia, with Daniil Viirok and Comin Farahvash Fashandi close behind. The top seven were separated by 0.531 seconds, and Hallikäär was the seventh. Championship leader Evelien Pouillie was not in that group or anywhere near it. A first sector almost three seconds slower than pole left Pouillie 20th on the grid, 2.911 seconds off the pace, which for Renttu Racing is the kind of grid slot normally seen only in the other teams' results.

The race was wet from start to finish, and for the first 40 laps it was a strategic mess in the best sense. The lead changed hands 14 times, almost every time because somebody had just pitted, and seven different drivers led at least one lap. Walrond led the first eight laps from pole before the pit cycle and a run of stops dropped the Handbrake down the order; Walrond finished seventh. Viirok went off at high speed on lap 34, lost about ten seconds getting out of the gravel, ended up making five stops and finished tenth after losing a place to team-mate Benito Adam Negrete on the final lap.

Napizia was the constant. Second on the grid, four stops, one spin on lap 22 that cost about five seconds and changed nothing, and in front for good from lap 40 onwards. By lap 43 the lead over Hallikäär was 8.50 seconds. The safety car stayed out for five laps while the remains of the JP Suave were cleared away. Cassuto was unhurt. The lead, however, was gone, and on lap 49 Napizia had to win the race a second time, in a single lap. At the restart the gap to Hallikäär was 0.495 seconds. It was enough.

Not everyone enjoyed the wait. Safety car laps of close to five minutes each turned the closing stages into a test of patience, and the paddock chat followed every one of them. "This race is pure chaos lol," wrote Matteo Rossi of Andrea Moda Formula. Renttu Racing's Henri Kuivanen had a broader complaint: "5 minute laptimes, just so stupid to wait for 10 hours these races to end. We should have that 2h race time limit like real F1." Dan Silver of Silver Cosmos had other concerns: "You're telling me Henri - 5 minute laps to see how soon Hallikäär and Pouillie overtake me..." A few minutes later came the plea: "c'mon 3 more laps of safety car." Kuivanen offered reassurance of a sort, "Napizia was already fastest man on last stint. He is the surest bet to win without a spin," a generous forecast given that the two cars queuing behind Napizia were his. Silver replied: "he has had two spins already."

As the restart approached, the history lessons arrived. Rossi suggested Abu Dhabi 2021. Silver preferred Hungary 97, "don't think we're worthy of the Mercedes comparison!" For the younger readers: at Abu Dhabi in 2021, a late safety car wiped out Lewis Hamilton's lead, the race restarted for a single lap, and Max Verstappen passed the Mercedes on fresh tyres to win the race and the title. At the Hungaroring in 1997, Damon Hill had the Arrows-Yamaha more than 30 seconds clear before a hydraulic failure three laps from the end, and Jacques Villeneuve went past on the final lap. Both comparisons end with the leader losing. Silver picked the one with the underdog. Rossi's verdict, "nah you are safe, congrats," came first. Silver's followed a minute later: "Phew. Credit to Mr Pyke who trained both my drivers..." Mr Pyke, for the uninitiated, is les pyke, who runs the PYKE team.

The Renttu story is one of tyres rather than speed. Most of the front runners stopped four times. Hallikäär and Pouillie stopped three times, on laps 10, 22 and 35, and spent the extra time on track rather than in the pit lane. Pouillie gained eight places on the opening lap alone, from 20th to 12th. By lap 30 the two Renttu cars ran first and second, and after the final round of stops they were second and third again by lap 40. The safety car did not create the double podium, it only made it look closer. One stop fewer, two grid slots well below their usual standard, and Renttu still took 33 points out of Fürst. Hallikäär, bought from Pirate Panda Race last season, scored a second podium in two starts for the team this year.

Farahvash Fashandi finished fourth for Paolonio Racing, 1.699 seconds behind the winner and the best result of the season by a distance. Ross Lane was fifth for Arun Roughneck Racing Team, Edmund Potts sixth for SGA Racing, Walrond seventh, Jaiden Compton eighth for Paolonio, with Adam Negrete and Viirok completing the points for Andrea Moda Formula. Silver Cosmos had the full range of outcomes in one race: a win for Napizia, and Josef Høier out of fuel on lap 37, with a steering wheel thrown out of the cockpit for emphasis.

Then there is Fenninger Racing. Slade Aitchinson and Linwood Jelley started 13th and 17th and both ran out of fuel on lap 11, neither car having made a single pit stop. Two cars, eleven laps each, zero points. The team that has won eleven championships, ten of them in Division 1, second only to Renttu's twenty in the all-time list, now has 24 points after five races and drops from sixth to eighth in the constructors' table.

The timing could hardly be worse. Eulalio Nava Castillo, who had scored 16 of those 24 points, has left for Trackhouse Racing in Division 2.2 and won there on debut on Sunday. Fenninger lost its best-scoring driver, and on the evidence of Fürst, it did not have a plan for the fuel either. It may not be the last departure. According to paddock rumours, Jelley is talking to other teams. For a team with Fenninger's history, the question is no longer how to win the title back, but how to keep a driver line-up together long enough to try.

The championship has tightened at the top and stayed wide open below. Pouillie's third place means 85 points and a ten-point lead over Potts on 75. Napizia's win jumps the Silver Cosmos driver to 59, ahead of Walrond on 55. Viirok has 48, level with Alvaro José jr. Ferreira de Almeida, who did not race. In the constructors' championship Renttu Racing move to 166 points, 84 clear of SGA Racing on 82, with Silver Cosmos up to third on 62. Renttu have now shown that they can win from the front and score big from the back. That is the part the rest of the grid should worry about.

Season 47, Week 7, Division 2.4, Fürst (race 5 of 10)

Five from five: Viktor's farewell tour refuses to slow down

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Somebody should tell Guntram Viktor that farewell seasons are supposed to be sentimental, not clinical. The Zeroforce F1 driver, 34 years old and retiring at the end of the year, won at Fürst by 28.296 seconds from Liang-hsi Sun. That is five wins from five races. The opposition is running out of ideas, and Viktor is running out of races in which to humiliate them.

Qualifying was held on a wet track, and Viktor took pole on intermediates with a 2:40.316, purple in all three sectors and 0.181 seconds ahead of Rochan Satyanarayana. On Sunday the track was dry, the sun was out, and the gap became a lead. Viktor started on softs, ran four stops on mediums after that, set the fastest lap of the race at 2:29.659 on lap 2 and only gave up first place during the pit cycles. By lap 35 the lead over Sun was 22.24 seconds. The rest of the afternoon was administration.

"I want to thank the team, everyone at Zeroforce who believed in me," Viktor said afterwards, in the tone of a driver who has given the same speech four times already this season and intends to give it five more. "It is an incredible season, and I want to enjoy every race until the end." Viktor won the Division 2.4 title in Season 45 and has driven for Zeroforce since Season 42. The decision to retire has been made. The rest of the grid will not be sending flowers to talk Viktor out of it.

Sun took second for Tycoon R. INC., the only driver who kept Viktor in sight for any length of time, and even that ended with a 7-second mistake on lap 34. Satyanarayana took third for Leleux Racing on the last lap, when Andreas Clijsters lost around four seconds with an error and fell to fourth. Henry McIlvenny, in the second Leleux, set the second-fastest lap of the race but lost time with a tyre that could not be mounted properly at the final stop on lap 42, and finished sixth, 0.325 seconds behind fifth place.

Fifth place belonged to Remo Tito, and for Pirate Panda Race it was the most expensive fifth place of the season. The team arrived at Fürst with a new chassis, a new floor, a new diffuser and a new engine. Tito and Alejandro Estrada Ojeda qualified seventh and eighth, around a second off pole. In the race Tito ran in the top three during the middle stint, then spun off at high speed on lap 29 and lost about 13 seconds, and went into the gravel on lap 42 for another seven. The final gap to Satyanarayana in third was 8.85 seconds. Estrada Ojeda lost around 10 seconds in a multiple spin on lap 16 and four more on lap 33, and finished ninth.

Team principal Philip E. was not amused. "We put a new chassis in, a new floor, a new diffuser, a new fucking engine. Everything is new except the result," Philip said. "Fifth and ninth. For that money I could have bought a house. At least a house does not spin."

Asked whether the problem was the car or the two trips off the track, Philip did not hide behind the upgrades. "The car is not slow. The car is new, and new means nobody knows where the limit is yet, so Remo goes and finds it, twice, at high speed. Good, now we know. Next time we find it in practice, not on Sunday."

The data backs up the first half of that. With the pit laps stripped out, Tito's average race pace was 2:31.11, the third-best in the field behind Viktor and Sun. Without the 20 seconds spent in the gravel and on the grass, a podium was well within reach. That makes the result more painful, not less.

Further back, Oprando Premiani finished seventh in the second Zeroforce, Jeton Lustig eighth and Rubens Schivo tenth for Jaguar Racing Team. Bobbo F1, CJ Motorsport and Quirk finished outside the points, and Amadeus Mader spent most of the race demonstrating every kind of mistake the Fürst layout offers, ending with a 16-second spin on lap 47.

The championship is no longer a fight, it is a countdown. Viktor moves to 125 points, 50 clear of Satyanarayana on 75. Sun's second place lifts Tycoon's driver to 58 and past Tito, who drops to fourth on 55. With five races to go and 125 points still available, the title is mathematically open. Practically, it would take Viktor retiring early to change that, and Viktor has made it very clear when the retirement starts. In the constructors' championship Zeroforce F1 lead on 164 points, ahead of Leleux Racing on 104, Tycoon R. INC. on 98 and Pirate Panda Race on 70.

Season 47, Week 7, Division 2.4, Fürst (race 5 of 10)

Five from five: Viktor's farewell tour refuses to slow down

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Somebody should tell Guntram Viktor that farewell seasons are supposed to be sentimental, not clinical. The Zeroforce F1 driver, 34 years old and retiring at the end of the year, won at Fürst by 28.296 seconds from Liang-hsi Sun. That is five wins from five races. The opposition is running out of ideas, and Viktor is running out of races in which to humiliate them.

Qualifying was held on a wet track, and Viktor took pole on intermediates with a 2:40.316, purple in all three sectors and 0.181 seconds ahead of Rochan Satyanarayana. On Sunday the track was dry, the sun was out, and the gap became a lead. Viktor started on softs, ran four stops on mediums after that, set the fastest lap of the race at 2:29.659 on lap 2 and only gave up first place during the pit cycles. By lap 35 the lead over Sun was 22.24 seconds. The rest of the afternoon was administration.

"I want to thank the team, everyone at Zeroforce who believed in me," Viktor said afterwards, in the tone of a driver who has given the same speech four times already this season and intends to give it five more. "It is an incredible season, and I want to enjoy every race until the end." Viktor won the Division 2.4 title in Season 45 and has driven for Zeroforce since Season 42. The decision to retire has been made. The rest of the grid will not be sending flowers to talk Viktor out of it.

Sun took second for Tycoon R. INC., the only driver who kept Viktor in sight for any length of time, and even that ended with a 7-second mistake on lap 34. Satyanarayana took third for Leleux Racing on the last lap, when Andreas Clijsters lost around four seconds with an error and fell to fourth. Henry McIlvenny, in the second Leleux, set the second-fastest lap of the race but lost time with a tyre that could not be mounted properly at the final stop on lap 42, and finished sixth, 0.325 seconds behind fifth place.

Fifth place belonged to Remo Tito, and for Pirate Panda Race it was the most expensive fifth place of the season. The team arrived at Fürst with a new chassis, a new floor, a new diffuser and a new engine. Tito and Alejandro Estrada Ojeda qualified seventh and eighth, around a second off pole. In the race Tito ran in the top three during the middle stint, then spun off at high speed on lap 29 and lost about 13 seconds, and went into the gravel on lap 42 for another seven. The final gap to Satyanarayana in third was 8.85 seconds. Estrada Ojeda lost around 10 seconds in a multiple spin on lap 16 and four more on lap 33, and finished ninth.

The frustrating part is in the data. With the pit laps stripped out, Tito's average race pace was 2:31.11, the third-best in the field behind Viktor and Sun. Without the 20 seconds spent in the gravel and on the grass, a podium was well within reach. Team principal Philip E. was not amused, and said so at length. The conversation follows below.

Further back, Oprando Premiani finished seventh in the second Zeroforce, Jeton Lustig eighth and Rubens Schivo tenth for Jaguar Racing Team. Bobbo F1, CJ Motorsport and Quirk finished outside the points, and Amadeus Mader spent most of the race demonstrating every kind of mistake the Fürst layout offers, ending with a 16-second spin on lap 47.

The championship is no longer a fight, it is a countdown. Viktor moves to 125 points, 50 clear of Satyanarayana on 75. Sun's second place lifts Tycoon's driver to 58 and past Tito, who drops to fourth on 55. With five races to go and 125 points still available, the title is mathematically open. Practically, it would take Viktor retiring early to change that, and Viktor has made it very clear when the retirement starts. In the constructors' championship Zeroforce F1 lead on 164 points, ahead of Leleux Racing on 104, Tycoon R. INC. on 98 and Pirate Panda Race on 70.


Live from the pit wall: Philip E., Pirate Panda Race

Murray Ledger: Philip, new chassis, new floor, new diffuser, new engine. Fifth and ninth. Is that what the upgrade budget was supposed to buy?

Philip E.: No. For that money I could have bought a house. A house does not spin. A house stays where you put it. My cars, I put them on the track and twenty minutes later they are in the gravel looking at the sky. Everything is new except the result, and the result is shit.

Murray Ledger: Tito had the third-best race pace in the field. Two trips off the track cost about 20 seconds, and the gap to the podium was under nine. Is that a car problem or a driver problem?

Philip E.: It is a fucking Remo problem, twice. Once on lap 29 at high speed, nearly into the barrier, then again on lap 42 in the gravel, just to make sure we understood the first time. And Alejandro, a full pirouette on lap 16, very elegant, I give him nine points for artistic expression and zero points for the championship. I love my drivers. Today I love them a little bit less.

Murray Ledger: To be fair to the drivers, the car is brand new. Does anybody in the team actually know where its limit is yet?

Philip E.: No, and that is the honest answer. New car means nobody knows where the edge is, so the drivers go looking for it, and they found it. Good, now we know where it is. I would prefer we find it on a Friday and not on a Sunday with points on the table.

Murray Ledger: So the upgrades work?

Philip E.: The car is not slow. That I can say. If the base is right for the second half of the season, that I cannot say yet, and anybody who tells you different after one race is lying or selling you something. Fürst is not a normal track. Speed matters, cornering matters, handling matters, everything matters a bit, nothing matters the most. Most of the calendar does not look like this. So one good pace at Fürst, it is nice, but it is not proof.

Murray Ledger: Then what is the plan for the break?

Philip E.: Summer break, then testing at the Alpenring. Who tests on the Alpenring? The asphalt there is like sandpaper, you drive three laps and the tyres look like they went through a cheese grater. But that is where the tests are, so that is where we go, and we learn what we can. Then Mira. Mira will tell us if this car is good, or if I have to explain to the accountants why we bought a very expensive spinning machine.

Murray Ledger: Fourth in the drivers' standings now, fourth in the constructors'. Realistic target for the second half?

Philip E.: Stay on the track. That is the target. If we stay on the track, the rest comes. If we do not, then you write another article about pirouettes and I drink something strong.

Season 47, Week 7, Division 2.3, Fürst (race 5 of 10)

Chiantia ends the Serbian run in the Fürst flood

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Four races, four Serbian Engineering wins. That was Division 2.3 until Sunday, when the rain came, the track flooded and Damiano Chiantia drove the Mustang Dark Horse R to victory by 14.710 seconds from Kaupo Villard. It is the team's first win in Division 2 under Tom X, who has run the team since last season, when seven wins in Division 3 brought promotion. This season Mustang had collected podiums. Now they have a trophy that is not for third, and the team history, which goes back to Season 38 under a long list of names, shows no Division 2 win before this one.

On Friday nothing pointed that way. Qualifying was dry and Villard took pole with a 2:29.548, purple in all three sectors and 0.931 seconds clear of Chiantia. Kenneth Roy Hewitt made it two Mustangs in the top three. By the start on Sunday the track was soaked, and the race became a different event with the same grid.

Chiantia took the lead on the first lap and kept it for the rest of the afternoon, apart from the four laps in which the pit cycle briefly put Villard in front. The race was settled early. Villard had stayed within three seconds through the opening laps, then went off at high speed on lap 10, needed time to get the engine running again and got out of the gravel trap about 15 seconds later. After the first round of stops the gap was 21.49 seconds. Villard set the fastest lap of the race, a 2:47.469 on lap 13, and clawed some of it back, but outside the pit stops the margin never dropped below 11.4 seconds from lap 21 onwards. The final gap was roughly the size of that one lap-10 excursion, which will not make the debrief any shorter.

Behind them the Serbian recovery was the work of Albrecht Klöb. Sixth on the grid, Klöb lost close to 50 seconds in the second sector of the opening lap, in the same corner where John Picknik's race ended in the tyre barrier, and was last of the runners after one lap. The safety car came out for two laps while Picknik's debris was cleared. Hassan Khechini was given a five-second penalty for causing a collision at the same spot. From 11th, Klöb worked back to fourth by lap 5 and then waited for the Mustang in front to blink. Hewitt obliged on lap 45, losing about five seconds with a mistake, and Klöb took third. Hewitt finished fourth, 5.426 seconds behind.

The more remarkable result in the top seven belongs to Sound of Speed's Max Heyman, and it needs some background, because the second Sound of Speed seat has seen more traffic this season than the pit lane. Jack Jones, on the podium in the season opener, was let go to make room for a Portuguese driver who then left the team faster than the ink on the contract could dry. The 16-year-old Reinhold Lacatus took the car into testing at Fürst and was replaced before the lights went out. Heyman stepped in without a single lap in testing. Two laps in qualifying produced seventh on the grid. On a flooded track, in a car the driver had barely met, Heyman ran fourth on the opening laps and finished seventh, in the points. Whoever is next in that seat now has a benchmark. Team-mate Khechini, penalty served, was fifth, with Hari Girsh sixth for JVR Phoenix.

Then there was strategy, of a sort. Fucho F1 started both cars on mediums in the rain, and their first laps took close to four minutes. Evaristo Meireles and Vítor das Dores Oliveira switched to intermediates after eleven laps and finished eighth and ninth, more than 27 and 29 minutes behind the winner respectively. HHF Race chose intermediates and two stops, and both cars ran out of fuel: George Mackie on lap 22, Khemais Al-Fessi on lap 32, who reportedly threw the steering wheel out of the cockpit. On a day when only nine cars saw the flag, that counts as a missed opportunity.

The championship still belongs to Serbian Engineering for now. Villard extends the lead to 111 points, 17 clear of Klöb on 94, with Chiantia up to 67. In the constructors' table Serbian Engineering move to 205 points, 87 ahead of Mustang Dark Horse R on 118. The gap is enormous. The streak, however, is over, and in a division that had started to look like a closed shop, that is the headline.

Season 47, Week 7, Division 2.2, Fürst (race 5 of 10)

Trackhouse's record signing pays out on day one

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

There are gentler ways to introduce yourself to a new team. Eulalio Nava Castillo, making a debut for Trackhouse Racing in place of Antonio Huhtala, qualified second, led the first lap, set the fastest lap of the race at 2:28.711 and won by 14.714 seconds from Willi Wulf. Trackhouse had not won a race all season before Sunday. It took the new driver one attempt.

It was not a cheap attempt. Nava Castillo arrives from Fenninger Racing in Division 1, and the paddock talk is of a record deal: a salary of close to 3 million a week, plus bonuses. Nothing is confirmed, but even as rumour it puts Nava Castillo among the best-paid drivers in any division. Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen may want to have a quiet word with their agents. For Fenninger, losing a driver of that calibre is a heavy blow in a Division 1 fight where positions are scarce.

For Trackhouse, Sunday answered the sporting question in the first race: a win, the constructors' lead and a debutant on the top step. The economic question is less comfortable, and the arithmetic is short. A win in Division 2 pays 80 per cent of the top-flight prize, which makes 4 million, and that money is shared out across the whole team in bonuses. Set against it is a salary reported at close to 3 million, paid every week whether the car wins or not, before the driver's own bonus has been counted. The salary alone is said to swallow almost everything a main sponsor pays, and it lands at a time when income from fans has fallen by more than 90 per cent. On those numbers, a race win barely covers a week of wages.

Sportingly, a clear victory. Economically, a bet that results will eventually pay for themselves, in a structure where every result also raises the bill. Whether it ends as a masterstroke or a Pyrrhic victory with very good lap times will not be decided on track.

Qualifying ran on a wet track, and Wulf took pole for Exasperace with a 2:40.930, purple in all three sectors and 0.089 seconds clear of Nava Castillo. Norbert Kudra, the championship leader, was third, 0.547 off pole. Peter Hanson started last on intermediates while everyone else ran full wets, and the stopwatch said 20.5 seconds was the price of that particular opinion.

By Sunday the track was dry, and the front two split on strategy. Nava Castillo started on softs and ran four stops, Wulf started on mediums and ran three, the last stint on hards. The lead changed hands six times, every time through the pit cycle rather than on track, and for most of the middle of the race the gap was small enough to argue about: 6.85 seconds in Wulf's favour on lap 20, 2.39 in Nava Castillo's on lap 30. The decisive number was pace. Pit laps stripped out, Nava Castillo averaged 2:29.94, Wulf 2:30.62, and that was enough to carry an extra stop. A small mistake on lap 23 and a trip through the gravel on lap 32 cost Nava Castillo around six seconds in total and changed nothing. After the final round of stops the lead was 4.20 seconds on lap 40. On mediums against Wulf's hards it grew to 14.714 by the flag.

Ottó Frey took third for RSA Racing, 50.447 seconds back on a three-stop run that finished on softs, a quiet race in the best sense of the word. RSA needed the quiet one. Afonso Azevedo, third in the championship coming into the weekend, ran a two-stop strategy, was up to fourth on lap 39 and then ran out of fuel on lap 40. That is a strategy with one stop too few, or a fuel calculation with one decimal place too many, and either way it is zero points.

Kudra's afternoon was the more interesting one, if not the more enjoyable. Third on the grid, 14th after the first lap: the opening sector alone was more than five seconds slower than the leader's, and with no incident recorded, the exact cause is not in the data. What followed was a recovery drive through most of the field, on a four-stop strategy, up to fifth at the flag. Fifth by 0.257 seconds, to be precise, behind Mariano Schweizer, who brought the Olivetti Corse from tenth on the grid to fourth on a three-stop run.

Directly behind Kudra, 0.306 seconds back, came Jorge Everardo Pasos, and if Nava Castillo's race was the headline, Pasos's was the better story. Fifteenth on the grid, eighth after the first lap, then a wheel that would not go on at the first stop on lap 6. The 9.981-second stop dropped the Trackhouse to 18th and last. Pasos finished sixth, a third of a second from fifth, and ran out of laps before running out of cars to pass.

Gombei Hanada was seventh for YMSF, Alpár Kádas eighth for Olivetti, Henrique De Albreuin ninth and Tore Morten Østerbø took the last point for ATMI Racing. Jean-Charles Brissault, fifth on the grid and fourth until the first stops, faded to 12th in the second Exasperace and lost 11th to Hideyoshi Ashida on the last lap. Frank Vanoppen logged ten mistakes or off-track excursions, twice as many as anyone else, and finished 15th. Tokichiro Kusatsu saved a multiple spin into the gravel for the final lap and finished 17th.

The championship has a new second place. Kudra extends the lead to 85 points, with Wulf now second on 73. Huhtala's 60 points stay in the table without a driver to add to them, and Azevedo remains on 58. Nava Castillo's 25 points put the debutant level with Schweizer's tally from before the race, which says something about either the debutant or the midfield. In the constructors' championship Trackhouse stretch the lead to 132 points, 35 clear of Arrows Grand Prix International on 97. Exasperace move past RSA Racing into third, 92 to 89.

Five races to go, and the championship leader has just shown that a bad lap one costs fifth place rather than the race. That is either reassuring or a warning, depending on which garage you are in.

Season 47, Week 7, Division 2.1, Fürst (race 5 of 10)

Fisch leaves Fürst with nothing to prove, Theisen leaves it with gravel in the sidepods

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Heinz Fisch did at Fürst what Heinz Fisch has done at every round since the opener: won. Four in a row now, and this time with pole, the lead and an afternoon spent making the timing screen look like a misprint. The Slow Car McNoPace driver won by 37.151 seconds from team-mate Hisaki Shimaoka, set the fastest lap of the race at 2:31.351 and only gave up first place twice, both times for a single lap while the pit cycle shuffled the order. It is the third Slow Car McNoPace one-two in five races. The rest of the field may want to start asking where the slow car is.

Qualifying already told most of the story. Fisch's 2:28.976 was purple in all three sectors and 0.696 seconds clear of Ernest Theisen, with Shimaoka a further 0.029 back and Mathew Geary fourth. The top four were covered by less than a second; fifth-placed Agoston Ágh was already 1.221 seconds off pole, and the gap only grew from there.

Fisch's race was a lesson in compound interest. Eleven seconds clear by lap 10, 21 by lap 20, almost 29 by lap 40. A four-stop strategy on mediums, with the final stint on softs from lap 41, never once looked like it needed a plan B. The average race pace, pit laps stripped out, came to 2:31.96. Nobody else got below 2:32.5.

The driver who came closest was Theisen, and that is why the result hurts. The Dinger Zoomie Racing driver pitted a lap earlier than Fisch at each of the first two stops and used the undercut to jump both Geary and Shimaoka at the first round of stops. From lap 12 onwards Theisen held second place whenever the pit cycle allowed, and on pace was the second-quickest car in the field, a tenth a lap faster than Shimaoka. With four laps to go the gap back to Shimaoka was 4.54 seconds. Then came lap 46, a high-speed trip into the gravel in sector two, an engine that briefly did not want to keep running and a 2:45.010 lap. Theisen rejoined fourth, behind Shimaoka and Geary, and finished there, 2.469 seconds short of the podium. Fourth instead of second is worth six points less, and as it turned out, those six points were the difference between second in the championship and third.

Shimaoka inherited second and kept it despite a small mistake on the last lap. Geary took third, which means Dinger Zoomie have the podium spot, just not with the driver who did the work for it.

Behind the top four, the gaps were measured in minutes. Alfonso Pintonello was a lonely fifth for Moneytron ACS, more than three minutes behind, after a race that started badly: an early first stop on lap 8 dropped the car to 12th before it worked its way back to fifth by lap 14. Perder Corse GP ran the only three-stop strategy in the top ten, hard tyres for three stints and mediums to finish, and it turned tenth and eleventh on the grid into sixth and seventh for Ermanno Capuzzi and Edoardo Marino. Marino's afternoon included a tyre that would not mount properly at the first stop and four mistakes in the final seven laps, one of them a gravel trip, and still ended in the points.

The last lap belonged to Nenko Issajew. Twelfth on the grid, 13th after four laps and then a spin on lap five, the second Moneytron driver passed Ramalingam Ahad on the final lap and took eighth by 0.597 seconds. Ahad, on softs since lap 40, had gone slower on every one of the last five laps. Ágh claimed the final points place for Wolf GP by passing Ser Cher Fernandez on lap 48, a modest reward for a team that qualified fifth and sixth. A lap-four spin into the gravel cost Ágh 16 seconds and seven places in one go, and Tomas Bernardas Jelinskas, who spun on the same lap, spent the race collecting offs and finished 13th.

At the back, Mutsuhito Dupiré had a race to forget, or at least one that will be hard to describe to the sponsors: a collision with Albert Augier on lap 2 that cost 27 seconds, then a left rear tyre that exploded on the start-finish straight on lap 8. Dupiré finished 15th. Augier, who collected a five-second penalty for a second coming-together with Dupiré on lap 39, finished 16th and last.

The championship now looks like this. Fisch, who scored nothing in the opener, has 100 points after 25 at Fürst and leads by 21. Shimaoka moves up to second on 79, one point ahead of Theisen on 78, with Geary fourth on 69. Behind them Marino has 46 and Pintonello 36, which is to say the title is a four-driver affair and the other twelve are racing for the record books. With five rounds left and 125 points still on the table, nothing is settled. The awkward part for Shimaoka is that the nearest target drives the same car, out of the same garage.

The constructors' table tells the same story in larger numbers. Slow Car McNoPace go to 179 points, 32 clear of Dinger Zoomie Racing on 147. Perder Corse GP, on 77, have a comfortable third. Moneytron ACS have 64, Wolf GP 25, Arun Racing Team 10, Équipe Renault Elf 3, and Forza Mutte Racing are still waiting for their first point of the season.

Two weeks after Fisch won in the rain at Velocitas, the dry version looked no different. Slow Car McNoPace set the pace, Dinger Zoomie argued about who gets to be third, and everybody else raced for the right to be lapped politely. Nobody actually was, which at Fürst passes for a moral victory.


--- Anmerkungen ---

Abgleich: Alle Abstände, Platzierungen, Stoppzahlen und Endreifen im Text wurden gegen den Screenshot "Unofficial Results" (Runde 49) gelesen, Quali-Zeiten und -Abstände gegen den Quali-Screenshot. Keine Widersprüche zum HTML. Achtung: Das Rennergebnis ist als "Unofficial Results" markiert; ein separates offizielles Endergebnis lag nicht vor.

Nur aus dem HTML: Führungsabstände nach Runde 10/20/40, Fischs Rennbestzeit 2:31.351, Race-Pace-Mittelwerte (Ausreißer > 3 s über Median entfernt), Theisens Rückstand 4.54 s auf Shimaoka nach Runde 45, Theisens Rundenzeit 2:45.010 in Runde 46, Stopprunden, alle Vorfälle (Dreher, Kollisionen, Reifenplatzer, Strafe, Reifenmontage Marino), Ágh-Überholmanöver in Runde 48.

Gap-Semantik: In der HTML-Tabelle ist "Race time" der Abstand zum Führenden, "Gap" der Abstand zum Vordermann. Gerechnet wurde mit dem Abstand zum Führenden.

Inferenz: "rund 13 Sekunden verloren" stammt aus der Lap-Highlight-Meldung, deckt sich mit der Rundenzeit. Ohne den Ausrutscher wäre Theisen rechnerisch Zweiter geworden; das steht im Text bewusst nur implizit.

Meisterschaft: Die Standings-Screenshots sind Stand vor dem Rennen. Die Punkte nach Fürst sind von mir hochgerechnet, nicht offiziell. Das Punkteschema 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1 habe ich aus den Standings rückgerechnet; es geht für alle punktenden Fahrer auf (z. B. Theisen 2/3/3/2 = 66, Capuzzi 10/9/5/5 = 23). Neuer Stand Fahrer: Fisch 100, Shimaoka 79, Theisen 78, Geary 69, Marino 46, Pintonello 36, Capuzzi 31, Issajew 28, Ágh 19, Bernardas Jelinskas 6, Ahad 6, Fernandez 4, Bleneau 2, Augier 1. Konstrukteure: Slow Car 179, Dinger Zoomie 147, Perder Corse 77, Moneytron 64, Wolf 25, Arun 10, Renault 3, Forza Mutte 0. Bitte gegen die offiziellen Standings nach dem Rennen prüfen, vor allem den 1-Punkt-Abstand Shimaoka/Theisen, an dem eine Pointe hängt.

Kontext: "every round since the opener", "four in a row" und "third one-two in five races" stammen aus den Standings: Fisch hat in Qatar keine Punkte (leere Zelle, also DNF oder DNS; ich schreibe nur "scored nothing", Siege in der Türkei, Italien, Frankreich; Doppelsiege in der Türkei und Italien. In Frankreich hat Shimaoka eine leere Zelle. Der Velocitas-Bezug (Week 5 = Italien-Spalte) stammt aus dem Archiv. Auf- und Abstieg habe ich weggelassen, weil unklar ist, ob die Fahrer- oder die Teamwertung entscheidet.

Dupiré: Die Reifenplatzer-Meldung trägt im HTML das Label "Retirement", Dupiré fuhr aber alle 49 Runden. Ich bin dem Ergebnis gefolgt.

Pronomen bewusst vermieden, obwohl die Engine-Texte "he" verwenden.

Season 47, Week 6, Division 1, Parc de Rivemaure

Potts converts pole as Renttu finish second and third, which apparently now counts as a crisis

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Edmund Potts won Division 1 at Parc de Rivemaure from pole position, his first win of the season and SGA Racing’s too. Behind him, Renttu Racing put both cars on the podium. Evelien Pouillie came from seventeenth on the grid to finish second, 7.466 seconds behind, and Bilal Hallikäär was third, 0.303 seconds further back, in Hallikäär’s first race since the transfer more than a season ago. It was a decent afternoon for Renttu. For a team that used to win eight races in a row, it was also a second race without a win.

Qualifying set up a straightforward story with a complicated twist. Potts took pole with a 1:40.016. Behind him the top four were split by 0.216 seconds, with Nicholai Bech Napizia second for Silver Cosmos, Ross Walrond third for Handbrake RD and Hallikäär fourth. Pouillie, the championship leader, qualified seventeenth, 1.326 seconds off pole, despite setting the fastest second and third sectors of anyone. All of the lost time came in sector one: 42.981 seconds against 41.611 for Potts. The data does not say what went wrong there, only that it went wrong comprehensively.

There was also a name missing. Alvaro José jr. Ferreira de Almeida, second in the championship before the race, does not appear in the race data. Hallikäär drove the second Renttu instead. Renttu bought Hallikäär out of a contract at Pirate Panda Race in Season 46 for 45.5 million, effective immediately. That was the last anyone saw of Hallikäär in a race. The wait was long, but the return was worth a podium.

Potts was never seriously threatened at the front. Potts led the first ten laps, opened a gap of nearly six seconds over Walrond, and only lost the lead to the pit cycle. Walrond led laps 11 to 13 by staying out longer, Daniil Viirok lap 22, and Hallikäär laps 23 and 24, each for the same reason. From lap 25 Potts led every lap to the flag. Potts stopped four times, the last time on lap 44 for softs, by which point Pouillie was 26 seconds behind. Potts had a small moment on lap 37 and lost about two seconds. The margin to Pouillie barely changed after that.

Pouillie’s race was a lot busier than that. Pouillie was thirteenth after the opening lap and eighth after four laps, and set the fastest lap of the race at that point, a 1:41.424 on lap 5. On lap 6 Pouillie spun off, lost about seven seconds, and fell back to fourteenth as seven cars went past. Then Pouillie started over. By lap 19 Pouillie was fifth again, and on lap 29 passed Napizia for good. The decisive move came at the stops. Pouillie went to hards on lap 25 and stayed out until lap 41 while the cars ahead stopped. On lap 38 Pouillie took second and kept it after the final stop to mediums. A small mistake on lap 52 cost two seconds and made no difference.

Hallikäär’s return was less spectacular, but nearly as good. Hallikäär lost a place to Viirok on the first lap, then stayed in the top five almost all race. Hallikäär led two laps during the second round of stops, and passed Viirok, Walrond and Napizia on track in the second half. Hallikäär switched to hards on lap 38 and held third to the finish. At the end the gap to Pouillie was 0.303 seconds, small enough to suggest the order could just as easily have been the other way round.

Walrond won in Italy and finished fourth here, 3.182 seconds behind Hallikäär. Walrond’s afternoon had a trip into the gravel on lap 19 that cost about six seconds and probably the podium. Walrond also set the fastest lap of the race, a 1:41.343 on lap 30. Viirok was fifth for Andrea Moda, Napizia faded from second on the grid to sixth, and Ross Lane took seventh for the Arun Roughneck Racing Team. Benito Adam Negrete was eighth in the second Andrea Moda, Ville-Veikko Sinivuori scored PYKE’s first points of the season in ninth, and Quinten Van Lancker took the final point for SGA in tenth.

At the back there were two races that ended almost before they started. Comin Farahvash Fashandi retired on the first lap for Paolonio Racing with a steering problem. Linwood Jelley ran out of fuel on lap 12 and, according to the live commentary, threw the steering wheel out of the cockpit. It is a nice image, but it doesn’t change the result.

So is Renttu slowly going backwards? The results are mixed. Renttu won the first two races of the season, in Qatar with Pouillie and in Turkey with a one-two. Italy brought only third and ninth, and now second and third. Two races without a win is not nothing for a team used to winning. On the other hand, Renttu scored 33 points this weekend, more than any other team, and SGA, the winners, managed 26. If this is going backwards, most of the paddock would like to go backwards the same way.

In the championship, Pouillie extends the lead to 70 points. Potts moves up to second on 67, three points behind. Walrond is third on 49, and Ferreira de Almeida, who did not race, drops to fourth on 48. Viirok has 47. In the constructors’ standings, Renttu remain clearly ahead with 133 points, 59 clear of SGA on 74. The gap at the front is now smaller among the drivers than it has been all season. Among the teams, there is no sign of a fight yet.

Season 47, Week 6, Division 2.4, Parc de Rivemaure

Viktor makes it four from four as Estrada Ojeda runs dry from second

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Guntram Viktor won the fourth race of the season in Division 2.4 as well. On paper the margin over Rochan Satyanarayana was 0.458 seconds, but that number was set behind the safety car. With two laps to go Viktor was more than 15 seconds clear. Oprando Premiani completed the podium for Zeroforce despite a gearbox that was losing gears, and Remo Tito finished fourth for Pirate Panda Race. The other Panda, Alejandro Estrada Ojeda, ran out of fuel on lap 24 while running second.

Qualifying had suggested a different afternoon for the Pandas. Viktor took pole with a 1:40.904, Satyanarayana was 0.327 seconds back, and Estrada Ojeda and Tito were third and fourth, separated by 0.021 seconds. Thirteen cars took part. Tycoon R. INC., third in the constructors’ standings before the race, did not appear in the race data at all.

Satyanarayana passed Viktor on the opening lap and led the first ten laps, with Viktor a few tenths behind. Estrada Ojeda held third, while Tito had started on mediums and dropped to sixth. On lap 1 Rubens Schivo collided with Jeton Lustig and lost about seven seconds. The stewards took no further action. The race then turned into a contest of strategies. Viktor stopped four times, Satyanarayana three. Viktor’s extra stop came on lap 45 for softs, and Satyanarayana stayed on mediums to the end. By then Viktor had already gained enough of a cushion to make that stop for free. Viktor led laps 18 to 20, 26 to 32 and from lap 40 to the end. Premiani filled the gap by staying out longer and leading laps 11 to 14, and Tito did the same and ran second for three laps.

On lap 23 Estrada Ojeda was second, 10.7 seconds behind Satyanarayana and 4.9 seconds ahead of Viktor. Viktor had stopped twice by then, Estrada Ojeda once. Then the car stopped. Estrada Ojeda’s laps up to then had averaged 103.88 seconds, about 0.4 seconds a lap slower than Satyanarayana and three tenths quicker than Premiani. The obvious caveat: a car that runs out of fuel has, by definition, been carrying too little of it.

Tito’s afternoon was solid rather than spectacular. After the first stop on lap 14, Tito spent most of the race in a group with Premiani, Henry McIlvenny and Lustig, and was fourth by lap 37. McIlvenny got back ahead in the next round of stops, but on lap 50 switched to intermediates and fell back to sixth. Bobbo’s Leland Bonny did the same a lap later and finished ninth. Both moves look like a bet on rain that the rest of the field did not take. Tito switched to softs for the final stint, held fourth, and finished 16.136 seconds behind Premiani.

The final drama came on lap 53. Shigeru Oyama, Quirk’s only entry, had a tyre burst and went into the tyre barrier. The safety car came out, the field bunched up, and the race finished behind it. That explains why Viktor’s 15-second lead appears in the classification as less than half a second. Lustig finished fifth, McIlvenny sixth and Schivo seventh. Amadeus Mader and Bonny took eighth and ninth for Bobbo, and Ignacio Alegre Arrizabalaga scored the first point of the season for CJ Motorsport in tenth. Renau Álvarez Crespo was eleventh.

Viktor now has 100 points, 40 clear of Satyanarayana. Tito moves up to third on 45, ahead of Liang-hsi Sun, who did not race. With six races to go the title is not decided, but at the moment it is a race for second place. In the constructors’ standings, Zeroforce lead with 133 points, ahead of Leleux on 81 and Tycoon on 68. Pirate Panda Race are fourth on 58.

Off track there was also news from the Panda garage this week. Tito has extended the contract, which runs until the end of Season 50, as anyone can read on the driver’s page. Neither side is saying anything about the details. Some media reports mention an option for a further season, but there is no public sign of it. In the paddock there are also unconfirmed rumours that Tito originally asked for considerably more and that negotiations were broken off for a time before an agreement was reached. What can be said for certain is that Tito appears satisfied.

Team Boss Corner

Murray Ledger: Philip, Estrada Ojeda was second on lap 23 and parked on lap 24. What happened?

Philip E.: What happened is we ran out of fuel. Again. You can write that down, everyone else already has. The engine setting was off. Not by a lot, by the skin of the teeth, but at the end of the stint you don’t get partial credit for being nearly right. The car just stops and everybody looks at the pit wall, and the pit wall is me.

Murray Ledger: This is the fourth time in two seasons that a Panda has run dry. Hallikäär at Lander Raceway, both cars at Merial, both cars at Al-Zubarah this season, now Estrada Ojeda. At what point does it stop being bad luck?

Philip E.: It was never bad luck. Bad luck is a tyre burst, like that poor guy from Quirk. This is maths, and we are bad at maths. I know. I’m not hiding it, I’d look even more stupid if I did. We’ll look at the setting again and then a third time, and then I’ll have someone check that I looked at it.

Murray Ledger: Estrada Ojeda was on a 103.88 average, quicker than Premiani, who finished on the podium. What could have been?

Philip E.: Don’t do this to me. A podium, maybe. Maybe a fight with Satyanarayana, if the car keeps running. But you know as well as I do, the car was light, that’s why it was quick and that’s why it stopped. So the real answer is: a good result if we put in the right amount of fuel, and we didn’t, so this is a stupid question and I hate that it’s a good one.

Murray Ledger: Tito finished fourth and is third in the championship. Is that what you expected?

Philip E.: Remo did his job. Quietly, nothing silly, points in the bag. That’s what you want. Fourth is not a podium, but Remo is third in the championship, and for a team that runs out of fuel every few weeks, that’s not bad, no?

Murray Ledger: Tito has signed until Season 50. People say the talks were difficult and at one point broken off.

Philip E.: People say a lot. Remo is here until 50, it’s on the website, anybody can read. The rest stays between us and Remo. If there was a fight, it was a good fight, and now everybody is happy. Next question.

Murray Ledger: Viktor has won four from four and has a 55-point lead over Tito. Is the championship over for the Pandas?

Philip E.: It’s not the season of the Panda, but it’s not yet the time to give up. Six races left. Viktor is very good, the car is very good, I’m not stupid. But second place is open, and if we finish races with both cars, which seems a very simple idea, we can be there. If we keep running out of fuel, you can write my obituary after Australia.

Season 47, Week 6, Division 2.3, Parc de Rivemaure

Villard wins as Serbian Engineering make it four one-twos from four

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Kaupo Villard won Division 2.3 at Parc de Rivemaure, 7.793 seconds ahead of teammate Albrecht Klöb, and Serbian Engineering added another one-two. That makes four one-twos in four races. The rest of the division is now racing for third, and this weekend HHF Race couldn’t even manage that with enough fuel.

Villard took pole with a 1:42.592, 0.103 seconds ahead of Klöb. The Mustang Dark Horse pair, Kenneth Roy Hewitt and Damiano Chiantia, were third and fourth, more than a second back. Villard’s start was the only real weakness all weekend. A small mistake on the opening lap cost about two seconds and dropped the leading car to fourth, and Klöb led from second on the grid. Villard was back up to second by lap 7 and then lost ground on Klöb for the next twenty laps.

Klöb led 28 laps in total, laps 1 to 10 and 13 to 30. Chiantia filled the gap by running longer on the first stint and staying out in front for two laps. The gap at the front shrank steadily, from 2.4 seconds on lap 14 to 0.547 on lap 30. On lap 31 Klöb spun off at high speed, narrowly missed the tyre barrier, lost about 11 seconds and handed Villard the lead. Villard kept it to the flag despite several small mistakes of his own, including a seven-second error on lap 43, and set the fastest lap of the race, a 1:44.371 on lap 39. Both cars ran four stops and finished on hards.

Hewitt finished third, starting on softs and running a three-stop to the end, 45.696 seconds behind the winner. Chiantia was fourth, 19.307 seconds further back, after switching to softs for the final stint. That gives Mustang Dark Horse a third and fourth place, which in this division is about as good as it gets.

John Picknik took fifth for JVR Phoenix. It was Picknik’s first appearance in the standings this season, from twelfth on the grid, after a qualifying lap that lost more than ten seconds in the final sector. A seven-second mistake on lap 2 didn’t help either. JVR’s regular, Hari Girsh, finished seventh. Hassan Khechini was sixth for Sound of Speed. The second Sound of Speed car, driven by Eurico Travada, lost its front wing on lap 13 and retired because there was no replacement in the pits. Fucho F1 finished eighth and ninth with Evaristo Meireles and Vítor das Dores Oliveira, both on four-stop strategies and more than five minutes behind.

Then there is HHF Race. George Mackie ran out of fuel on lap 45. Khemais Al-Fessi made it slightly further, to the last lap, before also running dry. The live commentary called it “a joke”, which was harsh but not exactly wrong. With both cars out, the team scored nothing from a race where three cars had already left the classification, and Fucho moved ahead of HHF in the constructors’ standings.

In the championship, Villard extends the lead to 93 points, 14 clear of Klöb. Chiantia is a long way back in third on 42, ahead of Hewitt on 39. Khechini and Girsh have 36 each. Serbian Engineering now have 172 points in the constructors’ standings, more than twice as many as Mustang Dark Horse on 81. The only remaining question in Division 2.3 seems to be which of the two Serbian Engineering drivers goes up, because there is only one promotion place.

Season 47, Week 6, Division 2.2, Parc de Rivemaure

Kudra keeps Wulf three tenths behind for 54 laps

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Norbert Kudra won Division 2.2 at Parc de Rivemaure by 0.298 seconds. Willi Wulf spent most of the afternoon about three tenths behind the Arrows and finished exactly there. Jorge Everardo Pasos was another 0.373 seconds back in third, so after 94 minutes the podium was covered by 0.671 seconds. Kudra also takes a 15-point lead in the championship.

Wulf took pole with a 1:40.716, only 0.057 seconds ahead of Kudra. Jean-Charles Brissault qualified third in the second Exasperace but does not appear anywhere in the race timing. Tore Morten Østerbø and Afonso Azevedo completed the top five on the grid. Antonio Huhtala, third in the championship coming into the weekend, qualified only sixteenth, 4.418 seconds off pole. Almost two seconds of that came in the first sector.

Kudra took the lead on the opening lap and kept it. Wulf then sat in Kudra’s slipstream for 54 laps, and the gap stayed between 0.27 and 0.38 seconds for almost the whole race. The order of the stops decided the race. Each time, Kudra stopped one lap before Wulf, on the stops around laps 11, 25 and 39. Each time, Wulf led for one lap and then came out behind again. Kudra led 45 laps. Wulf led the other three that weren’t Huhtala’s.

Huhtala’s race is what made the story more than a procession. Huhtala gained five places on the first lap and then ran a four-stop strategy, out of sync with the leaders, and took the lead on laps 26 to 29 and again on laps 40 and 41 when the front-runners pitted. Huhtala’s big spin into the gravel on lap 30 cost about 14 seconds, and the final margin to Pasos was 5.939 seconds. So the lap 30 spin probably cost Huhtala a podium. Whether the four-stop was the better strategy without that spin, the data can’t say for certain.

Pasos started seventh and was the only driver who seriously threatened the front two late in the race. Pasos was 3.9 seconds behind Wulf on lap 38, and after the final stops the gap had disappeared. On lap 43 Wulf ran wide into the grass, and Pasos went through into second. On lap 44 Pasos made a mistake and Wulf took the place back. After that the three cars ran nose to tail to the flag without anything changing, which happens a lot in this series.

Østerbø finished fifth for ATMI Racing, 1.921 seconds behind Huhtala, after a quiet race without incident. That turns out to be rarer than it should be. Azevedo was the only front-runner to start on mediums and ran as high as second in the opening phase. Azevedo set the fastest lap of the race on lap 39, a 1:42.406 on softs, but also made four mistakes, including a seven-second error on lap 37, and needed a fourth stop. Azevedo finished sixth, 16.834 seconds behind the winner, and started the weekend level on points with Kudra.

Mariano Schweizer was seventh for Olivetti Corse. Ottó Frey finished eighth for RSA Racing after a big spin into the gravel on lap 18 cost about 13 seconds. Frank Vanoppen went off four times and still took the final point for ninth place. Alpár Kádas took tenth, 1:12.303 down, and scored the last point. Gombei Hanada, Henrique De Albreuin, Peter Hanson, Owen Howlin and Hideyoshi Ashida followed. De Albreuin briefly ran third during the first stops, then went off into the gravel on lap 44 and finished twelfth. Deise’s two cars, Otello Profeti and Tokichiro Kusatsu, finished more than four and a half minutes behind, still running at the finish. That is the most that can be said for them.

In the championship, Kudra moves to 75 points, followed by Huhtala on 60, Azevedo on 58 and Wulf on 55. Pasos is fifth on 39. Kudra has won three of the four rounds. The fourth, in Italy, ended outside the points. In the constructors’ standings, Trackhouse Racing take advantage of Pasos’s and Huhtala’s double finish to move to 99 points. Arrows climb to second with 85. Exasperace and RSA Racing are tied on 74, and Exasperace will be wondering what a second car on the grid would have earned them.

Season 47, Week 6, Division 2.1, Parc de Rivemaure

Fisch takes the lead in the championship as Shimaoka’s car gives up

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Heinz Fisch made it three wins in a row in Division 2.1, leading all but two of the 54 laps at Parc de Rivemaure and crossing the line 25.523 seconds clear of Ernest Theisen. Slow Car McNoPace still had a bad afternoon. Hisaki Shimaoka arrived as championship leader and had shadowed Fisch in qualifying and for much of the race, but retired from third on lap 33 when an oil leak sent the car spinning into the grass and ended its day. The top of the table now looks different.

Qualifying set the tone. Everyone ran softs, and Fisch took pole with a 1:42.123, 0.641 seconds ahead of Shimaoka. Theisen was third, a further 0.106 seconds back, and Mathew Geary put the second Dinger Zoomie fourth, 1.517 seconds off pole. Agoston Ágh was fifth for Wolf GP, then Edoardo Marino, Tomas Bernardas Jelinskas, Alfonso Pintonello, Nenko Issajew and Didier Bleneau. Albert Augier and Ermanno Capuzzi completed a twelve-car grid, Capuzzi a full seven seconds off pole. Arun Racing Team and Forza Mutte Racing did not take part.

Fisch’s race was a lesson in tidy management at the front. Shimaoka only showed up in the lead on lap 12 and lap 24, both times while Fisch was in the pits, and by lap 23 the gap to the rest had grown to almost 18 seconds. Fisch made four stops to everyone else’s three or fewer, which says something about how much spare pace was available. A final soft stint produced the fastest lap of the race on lap 49, a 1:43.773 with purple times in all three sectors. That lap had no practical purpose. It still looked good.

Theisen’s afternoon started badly. A spin on lap 3 cost about four seconds and let Shimaoka through into second. Geary held second for the Dinger Zoomie team for stretches, on laps 13 and 14 and again from lap 25 to 27, before Theisen took the place back on lap 28. When Shimaoka retired five laps later, about 4.7 seconds behind Theisen at the time, the podium was settled. Geary finished third, 1:01.905 behind the winner, giving Dinger Zoomie a double podium on three-stop strategies.

The gap behind them shows how one-sided it was. Marino finished fourth for Perder Corse, 3:12.423 down, and that was a decent recovery. Contact with Issajew on lap 1 cost Marino around nine seconds and dropped the car to twelfth and last. A strong late soft stint brought it back up the order, and the decisive move came on lap 53 against teammate Capuzzi, who settled for fifth, 1.912 seconds behind. Capuzzi’s own race had its moments too: Pintonello hit the car on lap 2 and damaged the floor, and a high-speed spin on lap 8 cost about eleven seconds. From last on the grid to fifth is still a respectable afternoon.

Pintonello got a five-second penalty for the lap 2 contact, served at the lap 9 stop, and finished seventh for Moneytron, 1.431 seconds behind Ágh in sixth. Issajew was eighth in the other Moneytron, 0.875 seconds further back. Three cars covered by 2.31 seconds after more than three and a half minutes behind the winner: close racing, or an orderly queue, depending on your point of view.

Wolf GP had a split weekend. Ágh brought one car home sixth on four stops. Bernardas Jelinskas spun several times, including a trip through the gravel on lap 23 that cost about 13 seconds, and finished ninth, 5:12.782 behind. Renault Elf tried something different, starting both cars on hards and running two stops. Bleneau finished tenth, 1.171 seconds behind Bernardas Jelinskas, with Augier eleventh. The alternative strategy did not give them an alternative result.

The championship has a new leader. Shimaoka won the season opener at Al-Zubarah, where Fisch retired with a gearbox issue, and came into Rivemaure on 61 points, eleven ahead of Fisch. With a 25-point win and a 0-point retirement, that order is reversed: Fisch now leads with 75, ahead of Theisen on 66 and Shimaoka on 61. Theisen has finished on the podium in every round and has yet to win, which is a very consistent way of staying second. Geary moves up to 54. In the constructors’ standings, Slow Car McNoPace still lead on 136, but Dinger Zoomie’s double podium cuts the gap to 16 points. With only one promotion place available, the team is now competing with its own drivers as much as with anyone else.

THE PITWALL TIMES
The empire stumbles
Season 47, Round 3, Division 1. By Murray Ledger

For two races, Division 1 had one story: Renttu Racing wins, everyone else watches. At a flooded Velocitas, that story changed.

Ross Walrond won for Handbrake RD. Edmund Potts took second place on the last lap. Alvaro José jr. Ferreira de Almeida, used to standing on the top step this season, had to settle for third. And Evelien Pouillie, double winner and championship leader, starting from pole, finished ninth.

Ninth. In a Renttu.

It started with one decision. Qualifying had been dry and Pouillie took pole. Race day was a different world: rain, standing water, a flooded track. Pouillie lined up on intermediates. By the end of the first lap he had dropped from first to 22nd, and for six laps he went backwards, losing fifteen seconds every lap to cars on wet tyres. When he finally pitted for wets, the leaders were two minutes up the road.

Then the champion showed why he is the champion. For fifty laps Pouillie was the fastest man on the track, working his way through the field one car at a time. Rodrígues de Morais, Sinivuori, Van Lancker, Joshi, Farahvash Fashandi, Sayre, Adam Negrete. Twenty-third became tenth. Tenth became ninth. With a normal start, this would have been a race for the win. Instead it was worth two points.

At the front, Walrond led from the start. On lap 32 Almeida passed him, and for ten laps Renttu still seemed to have the race under control. Then, on lap 42, Almeida went off at high speed and ended up in the gravel. The engine almost stalled. Twelve seconds were gone, and with them the lead. Walrond took over and was never seen again. After a retirement in Qatar and fourth in Turkey, Handbrake RD finally got the result its pace had been promising.

The real drama came at the end. For ten laps Potts sat behind Almeida, with Nicholai Bech Napizia right behind him. Potts tried on lap 49 and again on lap 50, and both times had to pull back in. Three cars, barely a second apart, lap after lap. Then, on the final lap, a small mistake from Almeida in sector 2. One second lost. Potts went through. Almeida saved third by 0.620 seconds.

It is not a crisis yet, but for Renttu it is a warning.

Behind them, Napizia was fourth after one of his strongest races of the season, and Daniil Viirok fifth. Ross Lane survived a big spin to finish sixth. Quinten Van Lancker spent more time on the grass than on the track, with four separate off-track moments, and finished thirteenth.

Three cars ran out of fuel, Martti Voldek after only twelve laps. Gustav-Adolf Adam and Josef Høier stopped together on lap 46. That makes nine drivers across the four divisions who ran out of fuel this weekend. Somebody should check what the fuel calculators are doing.

The championship

Seventeen points of lead are down to four. Pouillie has 52, Almeida 48, Potts 42. Walrond and Viirok are level on 37. Two weeks ago the title looked settled. Now five drivers are within fifteen points, and the remaining races suddenly matter.

Renttu still has a large lead in the constructors' championship: 100 points against SGA's 48. The fastest car on track on Sunday was still a Renttu, and the race was lost through a tyre call, not a lack of pace. But the other teams now know Renttu can be beaten.

THE PITWALL TIMES
Five seconds and a stubborn wheel
Season 47, Round 3, Division 2.4. By Murray Ledger

Guntram Viktor won at Autodromo Internazionale Velocitas by 14.7 seconds and remains unbeaten this season: three races, three wins. Liang-hsi Sun was second for Tycoon R. INC. Remo Tito finished third for Pirate Panda Race, 0.313 seconds behind Sun. For most of the afternoon it was clear that Tito could have fought for the win.

Tito took pole by 0.205 seconds from Oprando Premiani on a wet track. On race day the track was dry, and he left the line slightly too early. The stewards noticed and gave him a five-second penalty, to be served at his first stop. Tito then led every lap of the first stint and was 3.3 seconds clear of Viktor at the end of lap 8, so the penalty alone was not the end of his chances.

Then came the first pit stop on lap 9. The mechanics had to wait the five seconds, and then had trouble with a wheel. In total the stop cost about thirteen seconds more than a normal one. Tito rejoined ninth. By the time the pit cycle had settled on lap 16 he was third, 7.9 seconds behind Viktor rather than 3.3 seconds ahead of him. As the saying goes, bad luck rarely comes alone.

It got worse. After his second stop on lap 22, Tito came out right behind Rochan Satyanarayana, whose Leleux was on a three-stop strategy with heavier fuel and older tyres. He spent eight laps within half a second of him, lapping almost a second slower than his normal pace, and failed to pass on lap 29 before getting through on lap 30. In that phase the gap to Viktor grew from nine to fifteen seconds, and it stayed there to the flag. Thirteen seconds lost at the first stop and about six in traffic, against a 15-second deficit at the finish. Without either, this would have been a straight fight for the win between Tito and Viktor. On Sunday it was not.

There was still second place. Sun went into the gravel on lap 50 and lost six seconds, and Tito, on fresh softs after his last stop, closed in quickly. By lap 53 he was 0.316 seconds behind. He tried to pass on lap 54 and again on lap 56, and both times had to drop back. He finished 0.313 seconds behind.

Alejandro Estrada Ojeda had a weaker weekend. He qualified tenth, 1.163 seconds off his team-mate, and Saturday decided much of Sunday. The race was spent in traffic: Ojeda was stuck behind McIlvenny, Clijsters, Satyanarayana, Lucassen and Lustig at various points, often for several laps. Despite four overtakes on lap 16, a five-stop strategy cost him the positions again each time. His race pace was about a second a lap slower than Tito's. He finished tenth and took the final point, 4.9 seconds behind Sem Lucassen.

Team boss Philip E. was calm about it. "I'm not unhappy," he said. "The pace was good. Alejandro had a bad Saturday, and he knows that. Now we need to improve our qualifying performance a lot, and the race pace, and... well. There are still a few weeks to go. We'll get there."

Behind the leaders, Satyanarayana took fourth for Leleux Racing, ahead of Andreas Clijsters and Henry McIlvenny. Premiani dropped from second on the grid to seventh. Jeton Lustig finished eighth after losing 16 seconds in the gravel on lap 26. Bobbo F1's Leland Bonny ran out of fuel on lap 15 without having stopped. The commentary reported that he threw his steering wheel out of the cockpit. He was the sixth driver across the four divisions to run out of fuel this weekend.

The championship

Viktor now has 75 points, a 33-point lead over Satyanarayana on 42. Sun has 40 and Tito 33, with Pirate Panda Race having missed the first race. In the constructors' championship Zeroforce F1 has 93 points, ahead of Tycoon R. INC. on 68 and Leleux Racing on 55. Pirate Panda Race moves up to fourth with 46 points, ahead of Jaguar Racing Team on 38.

Three questions for Philip E.

Murray Ledger: Thirteen seconds at the first stop, six more behind Satyanarayana. Without that, it would have been a fight for the win. Does that hurt?

Philip E.: There's a German saying: "Hätte, hätte, Fahrradkette." Roughly: "If, if, bicycle chain." Should have, would have, could have. Nobody ever won a race with that. We finished third, and that is the result.

Murray Ledger: But the pace was there.

Philip E.: The pace is a bit better, yes. We were with Viktor for long periods of the race, and that's new. It's not enough yet, but it's going in the right direction.

Murray Ledger: So what's the goal for the next few weeks?

Philip E.: Guntram has spent a lot of this season with Remo in his mirrors. We'd like to change that soon. For a bit of variety, he can look at Remo's diffuser instead.

THE PITWALL TIMES
Serbian Engineering, again
Season 47, Round 3, Division 2.3. By Murray Ledger

Kaupo Villard won at Autodromo Internazionale Velocitas by exactly one minute from team-mate Albrecht Klöb. It was Serbian Engineering's third one-two in three races. Villard took pole by 0.796 seconds on a wet track, led every lap of the dry race and lapped consistently in the 2:15s and 2:16s, with nobody else close. Klöb's own afternoon included two minor errors and an early fight with the Mustangs, but even without them second place was never under threat. A minute was simply the gap between the two cars that afternoon.

The only real story in the division was behind them. Mustang Dark Horse Racing finished third and fourth for the second race running, with Damiano Chiantia ahead of Kenneth Roy Hewitt. Not long ago that would have been unthinkable: in Qatar neither Mustang car scored. Since then the team has scored 54 points from two races, more than anyone except Serbian Engineering.

The two Mustangs ran different strategies. Chiantia ran softs and stopped five times, Hewitt ran mediums and stopped four times. As a result they changed places at almost every pit cycle, and the timing screen showed an overtake between them roughly every ten laps. On the road they were never far apart. At the flag Chiantia was 4.6 seconds ahead. On this evidence the team has found the right car, and a strategy that works without needing to choose between its drivers.

Behind them was a different race. Hari Girsh finished fifth for JVR Phoenix, nearly three minutes behind the Mustangs, after swapping places with Hassan Khechini of Sound of Speed for most of the afternoon in the same pit-cycle pattern. Khechini spun on the final lap and lost six seconds, which made no difference to his sixth place. Jack Jones was seventh for Sound of Speed, and Fucho F1's Evaristo Meireles and Vítor das Dores Oliveira were eighth and ninth on hard tyres. Those were Meireles' first points of the season.

JVR Phoenix had a problem of its own. J. Picknik qualified sixth, then spent the race watching from beside the track because the team never assigned him to a car. Pitwall drivers are many things, but they do not find their own cockpit. Picknik's qualifying time put him alongside Khechini and Girsh. Even sixth place would have meant eight points, and JVR finished the weekend thirteen points behind Sound of Speed.

HHF Race had a weekend to forget. George Mackie and Khemais Al-Fessi were the only drivers to qualify on mediums on a wet track, and finished almost a minute off the pace. In the race, Al-Fessi ran out of fuel on lap 13 without having stopped, and Mackie followed on lap 15 after one stop. With Arrows and RSA Racing also having fuel problems in other divisions, this was not a good weekend for fuel calculations.

The championship

The provisional driver standings show Serbian Engineering in a race of its own. Villard leads with 68 points, seven clear of Klöb on 61. Chiantia and Girsh are level on 30, with Chiantia third on podiums, and Khechini is fifth on 28. In the constructors' championship Serbian Engineering has 129 points. Mustang Dark Horse Racing moves up to second with 54, ahead of Sound of Speed on 49 and JVR Phoenix on 36.

Three rounds in, the title fight in 2.3 is between the two Serbian Engineering drivers. Second place is wide open, and Mustang is the team in form.

THE PITWALL TIMES
Fastest car, wrong tyres, short stints
Season 47, Round 3, Division 2.2. By Murray Ledger

Afonso Azevedo won at Autodromo Internazionale Velocitas by 27.8 seconds from Willi Wulf, leading every lap from the tenth to the flag except one pit-cycle shuffle. It was RSA Racing's first win since Season 45. Jorge Everardo Pasos finished third for Trackhouse Racing, 0.318 seconds ahead of team-mate Antonio Huhtala, who tried to pass on the last lap and failed. All of that is accurate. None of it is the story. The story is the car that finished eleventh.

Norbert Kudra arrived as championship leader with two wins from two races, and took pole by 0.222 seconds. Then the Arrows Grand Prix International strategy room sent both cars into a dry race on intermediates. "Forgot strategy.. so dumb," team boss Antoine B wrote afterwards. That suggests the cars raced with their qualifying settings unchanged, and the stint lengths support it. Velocitas uses between 5.6 and 5.9 litres a lap, and Arrows never ran more than nine laps between stops, which fits a qualifying fuel load of about 50 litres. If that is right, the problem was fixed before the lights went out.

The timing makes it worse. Last week Arrows sold shares and is now a listed company. Paddock rumour says the sale was needed because fan income had collapsed. If so, the new shareholders have just seen their championship leader start a dry race on intermediates.

The first lap was hard to watch. Kudra dropped from pole to seventeenth, and Henrique De Albreuin went from fifth to eighteenth. Eight cars passed Kudra in sector 2 alone. For six laps the Arrows pair ran 2:28s while the leaders ran 2:13s, losing about fifteen seconds a lap. They pitted together at the end of lap 7, just over two minutes behind the lead.

From there Kudra drove the race of his life. On softs, his first full lap was the fastest of the race, and he lowered it again on laps 9, 10, 11 and 12. His typical lap was a second quicker than the winner's. Some of that came from carrying less fuel than the cars around him, but not all of it: pole position had already shown the car's pace. Whatever was in the tank, it was not enough. Arrows stopped every nine laps, on laps 16, 25, 34, 43 and 52. That is six stops in total, against four for the leaders, at about twenty seconds each. Kudra passed Kusatsu and Profeti on lap 14, Hanson on lap 32, and Kádas and Ashida on lap 41. When Ottó Frey retired, he was up to eleventh.

At the end of lap 51 he was 0.529 seconds behind Gombei Hanada and tenth place. Then he had to make his sixth stop. He came out 18.7 seconds behind the points, and set four more fastest laps in a row, ending with a 2:12.278 on lap 56, the best of the race. That cut the deficit by more than three seconds a lap. He crossed the line 0.731 seconds behind Mariano Schweizer. "Kudra drove like a man possessed at the end there," said Jussi Heikkinen of MacSalaatikko. He did, and it earned him no points.

A rough calculation puts the cost of the error at about 1:50 on intermediates plus about 40 seconds in extra stops. Kudra finished 1:26.7 behind the winner. Traffic and a normal fuel load would have cost him some of that difference, probably not all of it. On pace, Velocitas would most likely have been Kudra's third win from three races.

De Albreuin's race was overshadowed by his team-mate's, but it deserves a mention. Fifth in qualifying, only 0.689 seconds off pole, was a clear step forward. In the race he ran in the low 2:13s, on a par with the winner, made the same six stops and finished fourteenth. It is a result that looks worse than it was.

Østerbø led the first six laps for ATMI Racing before a trip through the gravel on lap 7 handed the lead to Wulf. Østerbø's afternoon then got worse: at least seven separate spins, including a 14-second one on lap 24. ATMI Racing still scored its first points of the season with sixth for Frank Vanoppen and seventh for Østerbø, which shows how fast the car is when it stays on the track. Jean-Charles Brissault finished fifth for Exasperace despite losing six seconds in a spin on lap 46. Owen Howlin's eighth place gave MacSalaatikko its first points of the season, a useful result for Heikkinen in his fifth season with the team. Hanada took ninth and Schweizer the final point in tenth, 0.731 seconds ahead of Kudra.

The old man and the win

Shaun Jooste has been in Pitwall since Season 1. RSA Racing has had no other manager, and in that time the team has had good years and bad ones. Sunday's win was its first in two seasons.

Is it the start of more? The numbers say possibly.

Azevedo's typical lap at Velocitas was around 2:13.8, about four tenths quicker than anyone else running a normal strategy. He did not just inherit the win: on pace, he was the best of the rest by a clear margin. His season reads third, fifth and now first, and he only drops out of the top five when the car fails.

Then there is the other half of the garage. Frey had the most aggressive race of the afternoon, rejoining traffic after every stop and overtaking his way back each time. He passed five cars on lap 10 and four more on lap 22, and was running fourth by lap 46. On lap 49 his car stopped in sector 2. He had made three stops, and the fourth he needed never came. The commentary reported that he threw his steering wheel out of the cockpit. "Can't remember when last I had a fuel calculation error," Jooste wrote. At least one other team in this division could say the same thing this weekend, and theirs was worse. Frey has now failed to finish twice in three races. Those two retirements are the difference between RSA's 62 points and the championship lead.

The honest answer is that RSA now has the second-fastest car in the division, and a manager who knows what that is worth. Whether it becomes the fastest depends less on RSA than on whether Arrows remembers to set a strategy. Repeat wins will need either Arrows to make more mistakes or RSA to find another four tenths. After forty-seven seasons, Jooste knows how rarely a rival makes the same mistake twice.

The championship

The provisional championship shows how much the error cost. Azevedo's win puts him on 50 points, level with Kudra, who stays in front only because he has two wins to Azevedo's one. Huhtala is two points behind on 48, and Wulf has 37. In the constructors' championship, Arrows started the weekend 15 points clear and finished it third: Trackhouse Racing leads with 72 points, RSA Racing has 62 and Arrows 60.

THE PITWALL TIMES
Fisch lands the catch as Velocitas drowns
Season 47, Round 3, Division 2.1. By Murray Ledger

Heinz Fisch won a flooded Autodromo Internazionale Velocitas by 26.4 seconds from team-mate Hisaki Shimaoka, giving Slow Car McNoPace its second consecutive one-two, something the team's name continues to deny. Dinger Zoomie Racing took third and fourth with Ernest Theisen and Mathew Geary, a podium for the third race in a row. Nobody else finished within two and a half minutes of the winner. Forza Mutte Racing did not reach lap ten.

Qualifying had been dry. Fisch took pole by 0.336 seconds. Race day brought rain showers and a flooded track from the start. Shimaoka, the championship leader, beat his team-mate off the line and led the first fourteen laps, never by more than a few tenths. Fisch sat in his slipstream and pulled out to pass four times, but never completed the move. The fastest lap of the race came on lap 8: Shimaoka's 2:30.079, three thousandths quicker than Fisch and eleven quicker than Theisen.

The race turned on lap 15. Shimaoka went into the gravel at Turn 4, lost seven seconds, and Fisch went through. Fisch pitted at the end of that lap. Shimaoka stayed out one more lap on worn wets, and when he rejoined he was behind both Fisch and Theisen. He then lost ground through the middle stint, about half a second a lap slower than his team-mate. Shimaoka stopped one lap later than Fisch at every pit cycle, so a heavier fuel load is a plausible part of the deficit. Two more small errors on laps 30 and 31 did not help. The gap was 15 seconds at lap 28 and 26 at the flag. That one trip into the gravel cost him seven points and probably the win.

Theisen's shorter first stint put him 1.7 seconds behind the lead at lap 16, the closest Dinger Zoomie came all afternoon. After that the Luxembourger fell back by half a second to eight tenths a lap. Geary stayed within 3.8 seconds of his team-mate until lap 55, when he spun at high speed in the final sector and lost 15 seconds. It did not cost him a position.

From lap 38 the rain got noticeably heavier. Lap times rose from about 2:31 to over three minutes by lap 48, and the gaps behind the top four grew with them.

Perder Corse GP took fifth and sixth. Ermanno Capuzzi beat Edoardo Marino by eleven seconds after taking fifth from Agoston Ágh on lap 6, when the Hungarian went into the gravel. Capuzzi had three points from two races before this one; he leaves with thirteen. The best fight of the day was between the Moneytron ACS team-mates. Alfonso Pintonello held seventh most of the race, six seconds clear, until he spun on lap 52. Nenko Issajew went through. For six laps Pintonello stayed three to four tenths behind but could not repass, and he finished 0.414 seconds back. Swapping seventh and eighth made no difference to Moneytron's total. Ser Cher Fernandez, Arun Racing Team's only runner this weekend, finished ninth on a four-stop strategy after starting thirteenth, and recovered from his retirement in Turkey. Équipe Renault Elf's Didier Bleneau and Albert Augier fought each other for the whole race. Bleneau finished ahead in tenth and scored his first point of the season. Their wider problem was pace: six to seven seconds a lap off the leaders in steady rain, and more than ten once it got heavier.

Wolf GP had a harder day. Tomas Bernardas Jelinskas started on intermediates on a flooded track and lost five places on the first lap. On lap 10, Ágh pitted from wets onto intermediates. For the next thirty laps both Wolf cars lapped at 2:49 to 2:50 while the leaders ran 2:30 to 2:31. Both switched to wets on lap 40. By the end Ágh was only about a second a lap off the leaders, so the car was not the main problem. A rough calculation puts the cost of the tyre choice at around eight minutes per car, before counting the extra stops from a five-stop strategy. Before his lap 6 excursion Ágh had been running fifth. Points were there to be scored. Instead Wolf GP, fifth and eighth in Qatar, retired both cars in Turkey and now finished last of the classified runners. That makes two races without a point.

Then there was Forza Mutte Racing. Mubarak Ali and Mutsuhito Dupiré qualified sixth and seventh in the dry and started the wet race on slicks. They lapped at 3:17, were 36 seconds down after one lap, and never pitted. On lap 9 both cars ran out of fuel, about twenty seconds apart. Twelfth and thirteenth in Qatar, a double retirement in Turkey and now a double retirement without fuel. Three rounds in, the team still has no points and has finished one race out of three.

The provisional championship tells the story of the season so far. Shimaoka still leads with 61 points, but Fisch, who retired in Qatar, has now won both races he has finished and has 50 points. Theisen is two points further back on 48, with Geary on 39. Marino is the best of the rest on 28, and the Moneytron drivers are level on 20. In the constructors' championship Slow Car McNoPace has 111 points to Dinger Zoomie's 87. Behind them, Capuzzi's fifth place moves Perder Corse GP to 41, one point ahead of Moneytron ACS, and into third place.

Pitwall Times | Division 1, Race 2 of 10: Körfez Otorom

Renttu, Who Else? Does Money Win Races, or Just Gearboxes?

Qualifying at Körfez Otorom was dry. Race day was not. All 24 cars started on wets, and nobody changed compound all afternoon. That made this race a test of patience, pit stop timing and reliability, and Renttu Racing passed all three.

Evelien Pouillie took pole in 1:53.869, just 0.343 seconds ahead of teammate Alvaro José jr. Ferreira de Almeida, and she led every one of the 60 laps. The margin was 6.995 seconds at the flag, and it never looked in danger. Ferreira de Almeida clipped a kerb on lap 26 and bent his suspension, but held second anyway. Renttu's real advantage was in the pit lane: three stops per car, while Andrea Moda's Daniil Viirok needed four. In the wet, each extra stop cost around 20 seconds. Viirok finished third, 27 seconds behind, so that one stop was almost exactly the difference.

Renttu wins again, and that's not news. What's interesting is who is chasing them. Andrea Moda are only a year out of Division 2 and already on the podium, at least with one of their two drivers. Viirok drove the kind of race you'd normally expect from a veteran: calm, error-free, always in the right window, and never out of the top three. Anyone who has watched him for a few seasons is reminded of a certain two-time Spanish world champion who always got more from his car than it really had. The difference is that Viirok is 25 and should only get better. Negrete in the second Andrea Moda finished twelfth, two minutes back, so for now the team is really running one car. But that car is hungry.

Behind them, Ross Walrond was fourth for Handbrake RD, Comin Farahvash Fashandi fifth for Paolonio and Nicholai Bech Napizia sixth for Silver Cosmos. Edmund Potts started fourth and dropped to seventh for SGA after running unusually long stints on his first set of wets.

Then there's Fenninger Racing. Linwood Jelley's gearbox failed on lap 19. Eulalio Nava Castillo was running eighth when his gearbox failed too, on lap 43. Two cars, two gearboxes, zero points. Longtime readers will remember that Fenninger once lost three cars in a single race. The details change each time, but the result is always the same.

This week, documents on Division 1 driver pay reached the Pitwall Times. They don't cover the whole grid, but they cover enough to spoil a few teams' weekend.

The best-paid driver in the documents is Eulalio Nava Castillo, at more than two million a week. His contract also includes a championship bonus of over ten million, about three times the next-highest title bonus we have seen. At Körfez he took the most expensive gearbox failure of the season out of the race on lap 43.

The winner makes the contrast even sharper. Evelien Pouillie reportedly earns less than a million a week, around a third less than Ferreira de Almeida, the teammate she beat by seven seconds. Renttu's two drivers together cost about as much as Nava Castillo on his own, and they finished one-two.

Comin Farahvash Fashandi is reportedly paid close to two million a week, putting him among the top earners. His bonuses are so small, less than a hundred thousand for a podium, that it hardly matters where he finishes. Today he was fifth, and his pay for the week was about the same as it would have been for last.

Andrea Moda are not saving money either. Viirok is paid in the same bracket as Farahvash Fashandi, but his contract rewards results: a win is worth almost as much again as his weekly salary. His teammate Negrete earns under half a million a week. At least on that point, the finishing order matched the pay.

The biggest gap is at SGA. Edmund Potts reportedly earns around 1.7 million a week, and his teammate Quinten Van Lancker almost ten times less. Potts finished seventh and Van Lancker ninth. For the extra money, SGA got two places.

Then there's Ross Lane of Arun Roughneck, on less than 400,000 a week, with a points bonus that is worth more than his weekly salary. He finished eighth, ahead of Van Lancker and not far behind Potts. Pound for pound, he may be the best-value driver on the grid.

So does money win races? It helps. Renttu shows that a well-funded team with sensible contracts can dominate for seasons. But Renttu pays well, not recklessly, and at Körfez the most expensive signing in the field was worth nothing when his gearbox failed. Money buys drivers. It doesn't buy reliability, and it doesn't buy strategy.

Renttu leave Turkey with a 1-2 and the usual confidence. Andrea Moda leave with a podium and a driver everyone will be watching. Fenninger leave with two broken gearboxes and presumably a very expensive repair bill.

Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Pitwall Times | Division 2.4, Race 2 of 10: Körfez Otorom

Pirate Panda Back from the Dead: Tito on Fire, Viktor Holds On, Leleux Steals the Podium on the Last Lap

A week ago Pirate Panda Race left the season opener with two retirements and nothing to show for it. At Körfez Otorom the team was back with two familiar faces in the cars, and it immediately looked like a team that knows what it is doing.

Remo Tito took pole in 1:55.114, just 0.038 seconds ahead of Guntram Viktor, with Alejandro Estrada Ojeda fourth. Viktor got the better start and led from the first lap, but he never escaped. Tito stayed within a second through the opening laps and within two seconds after the first stop cycle, and when Viktor's crew fumbled a wheel on lap 41, costing him 8.5 seconds in the pits, the gap dropped from 8.5 to 6.3 seconds. That was as close as it got. Both ran five stops on the same rhythm, mediums in stints of about eleven laps and softs for the final run from lap 53, and Viktor took the flag 6.866 seconds ahead. Only two cars were really racing today, and the rest of the field was more than a minute back.

Viktor won, and he deserved it. But anyone watching his mirrors all afternoon would not call this dominance. Zeroforce have the fastest car in the division for now, and Pirate Panda have a driver who can match it for 60 laps. That makes for an interesting season.

The strategy of the day belonged to Leleux Racing. Rochan Satyanarayana spent the race on mediums, with three long stints and stops on laps 14, 28 and 42, but he had not yet used a second compound. Rather than burn a stop on hards, Leleux waited until lap 56 and fitted softs with a 3.45-second splash. That dropped him to fifth behind Jeton Lustig and Estrada Ojeda. On the fresh softs he was two seconds a lap quicker, passed Lustig on lap 57, closed on Estrada Ojeda and went past him in sector 2 of the final lap. Third place, by 1.489 seconds. "I figured I'd gamble on a late soft," Lancil Leleux wrote in the paddock chat afterwards. It was a gamble, and it paid off.

For Estrada Ojeda that was a harsh ending to a strong drive. He ran four stops on mediums only, fought through the midfield pack all afternoon, overtaking Lustig, Clijsters, Sun and Premiani more than once, and held third for most of the closing phase. Fourth is still a solid result after last week's double retirement, but the podium was his until the last lap.

Behind them, Jaguar's Lustig finished fifth, ahead of Tycoon's Clijsters and Zeroforce's Oprando Premiani. Leland Bonny and Sem Lucassen collided on the first lap, which ruined both their races. CJ Motorsport's Ignacio Alegre Arrizabalaga had three tyre failures and finished 9:36 behind the winner.

Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Pitwall Times Interview: Philip E., Team Principal, Pirate Panda Race

Murray Ledger: Last week two retirements, this week second and fourth. What changed?

Philip E.: The drivers. Remo and Alejandro know this car, they know the team, and they know how we work. You saw the result. Tito was on it from qualifying, missed pole by nothing, and then chased Viktor for sixty laps without a single silly mistake apart from one small moment. That's what he can do when everything around him works.

ML: Tito was the story of the day.

Philip E.: He was. Zeroforce have the quicker car right now, no question. But six seconds after sixty laps, with the same strategy and a slow stop for them in the middle, is not a gap. It's a warning. Viktor won the race and I congratulate him. He won't enjoy looking in his mirrors for the next eight races.

ML: Let's talk about Henrique De Albreuin. He was bought out of his contract, and last weekend at Arrows he finished fifteenth, two seconds a lap slower than his teammate. Was letting him go the right call after all?

Philip E.: I won't kick a driver when he's down. Look at his last two weeks: two team changes in two weeks, which, by the way, the rules shouldn't even allow. New car, new engineers, new setup, and nobody gave him time to settle in. So is it adjustment or is it his level? I honestly don't know yet, and neither does anyone else after one race. What I do know is that today my car was on the podium and the other car was fighting for one. That's the only comparison that matters to me.

ML: Off the track the team has had some unpleasant news.

Philip E.: Unpleasant is a nice word for it. Overnight, fan income was effectively abolished. Last season it came to about 3.2 million a week, roughly a quarter of our commercial income. Now it's under 90,000. That's a cut of 97 percent. There was no announcement, no transition period and no stated target. Across a season that's around 40 million that just isn't there any more.

ML: Can the team cope?

Philip E.: We'll cope. We have reserves and we'll restructure without selling anything. But that's not the point. This is a management game. You're supposed to plan. If someone can change a key figure by a factor of thirty overnight, any planning you did is worthless. I don't object to the direction. I object to the way it was done. If fans are meant to be a certain percentage of income, say what the percentage is, phase it in, and let the teams adjust. That's not too much to ask.

ML: And your message to Zeroforce?

Philip E.: Enjoy it while you can.

Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Pitwall Times | Division 2.3, Race 2 of 10: Körfez Otorom

Tyre Carnage in Turkey: Five Finishers, a Team Without a Boss, and Serbian Engineering Out of Reach

Twelve cars started at Körfez Otorom and five finished. Five of the seven retirements came from tyre failures, one from an engine and one from an empty fuel tank. As a weekend it was more of a demolition than a race, and only one team came through it unscathed.

Serbian Engineering locked out the front row in qualifying, with Kaupo Villard on pole in 1:56.989 and Albrecht Klöb 0.353 behind, then did the same in the race. Klöb won by 4.357 seconds from Villard, with the Mustang Dark Horse pair more than twenty seconds back. The strategy was simple and flawless: five stops, mediums in stints of about ten laps, and hards for the final run from lap 51. Their tyres never came close to failing, which on Sunday was reason enough to be ahead.

It could have been Villard's win. He led the opening laps comfortably until his first stop on lap 10, when the crew struggled with a wheel and turned a routine seven-second stop into 16.16 seconds. After that he was chasing his teammate, and his own mistakes made it harder: a high-speed spin on lap 35 cost 17 seconds, and after the safety car had bunched the field and put him 0.345 seconds behind Klöb, he went into the gravel on lap 50 and lost another ten. Klöb also had problems, with the onboard camera showing his suspension bending strangely from lap 13, but the car held together. On this form Serbian Engineering's biggest rival is itself.

Mustang Dark Horse Racing took the remaining podium place. Damiano Chiantia finished third after a hard-tyre stint in the first half of the race, just ahead of Kenneth Roy Hewitt, who briefly led during the Serbian stop cycle around lap 20. Neither was ever a real threat to the red cars. Hassan Khechini brought Sound of Speed home fifth and last, 1:22 down after two trips off track. His teammate Jack Jones retired on lap 32 when his engine blew.

The saddest story of the afternoon was HHF Race. For the first race of the season there was still someone at the pit wall. By the second there was nobody left, and on Sunday it showed. Both cars started on softs, and on lap 10 both had tyre failures at exactly the same moment. Both came back out on softs. Khemais Al-Fessi crashed out on lap 27 after another tyre failure, and George Mackie spun twice on lap 31 alone, lost a third tyre and finally crashed on lap 40, bringing out the only safety car of the day. A car with no one at the pit wall does exactly what nobody tells it to, which is nothing sensible.

Fucho F1 did not do much better. Evaristo Meireles and Vítor das Dores Oliveira ran thirteen laps on mediums without stopping, and on lap 14 both tyres failed within six seconds of each other. The race log notes that Oliveira's race "ironically ended in the tyre barrier". At JVR Phoenix, Lasse Bro Ruberg ran out of fuel on lap 13, and Hari Girsh was running fifth on softs until a tyre failure three laps from the end put him into the barrier as well.

Körfez Otorom did not produce a winner so much as a list of teams that made mistakes. Serbian Engineering was the only team that made none. If the rest of Division 2.3 does not start working out tyre wear, the championship will be settled well before race ten.

Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Pitwall Times | Division 2.2, Race 2 of 10: Körfez Otorom

From Seventeenth to Fifty Seconds Clear: Kudra's Afternoon, De Albreuin's Nightmare

Arrows Grand Prix International went into qualifying on a wet track with slicks fitted, while the rest of the field ran intermediates or wets. The outcome surprised nobody: 17th and 18th on the grid, with Norbert Kudra 13.5 seconds off pole and Henrique De Albreuin 15.5 seconds off. Two hours later one Arrows car had won by 49.7 seconds, and the other was fifteenth, more than two minutes behind.

The race ran dry, and Kudra gained nine places on the opening lap. He was third by lap 5, passed Ottó Frey for second on lap 7, and on lap 11 went past polesitter Willi Wulf, who was just leaving the pits. Nobody saw the front of Kudra's car again. His strategy was five stops: two short soft stints, including a 4.2-second splash on lap 8, then three medium stints of about twelve laps each, and fresh softs from lap 53 to the flag. On those he lapped in the 1:56s while the rest of the podium was running 1:58s and 1:59s. It was the drive of the season so far, and it came from a grid slot his own team had thrown away.

Antonio Huhtala came from eleventh on the grid to second for Trackhouse. Wulf held on for third after qualifying on pole, but his teammate Brissault went from second on the grid to tenth, and Exasperace spent another afternoon stuck in the "Pasos pain train", as their team principal put it in the paddock chat. Deise finished almost eight minutes down, and nobody was surprised.

On the other side of the Arrows garage the numbers look very different. De Albreuin had the same starting position as Kudra, the same number of stops and the same compounds, and he finished 2:21.8 behind. On equivalent tyres he was two to two and a half seconds per lap slower than his teammate, and he lost that time in every sector. That was not one bad corner or one mistake. It was every lap, all afternoon.

His tyres also wore faster. Kudra's lap times rose by about four tenths over a medium stint; De Albreuin's rose by a full second. His second set of mediums lasted just eight laps before a tyre burst on lap 29, while Kudra ran twelve laps on the same compound without trouble. The blowout cost another twenty seconds on top of everything else. His full stops also took around 7.0 to 7.3 seconds, compared with 6.5 for Kudra, which suggests more fuel and a heavier car on every lap.

The team will point to the car, and there are plenty of reasons to. A driver who loses time everywhere, wears tyres faster and carries more weight is not getting the best out of a car that won the race by fifty seconds in his teammate's hands. It is only fair to note that on lap 30, on fresh softs after the blowout, De Albreuin was within two tenths of Kudra. So the pace is in there. He just couldn't find it for more than a lap.

That leaves the question nobody at Arrows will want to hear: is Henrique De Albreuin fit for Division 2? One race is not enough to decide, and whatever setup problems there were need resolving before anyone draws conclusions. But a two-second-per-lap deficit to the teammate in the same car is not a setup detail. If it happens again at the next round, the question will answer itself.

Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Pitwall Times | Division 2.1, Race 2 of 10: Körfez Otorom

Tyres Decide Everything in Turkey, and Slow Car Collect What Race 1 Took Away

Körfez Otorom rated "normal" on every characteristic this season. The tyres rated it differently. Sixteen cars started, ten finished, and there were thirteen tyre failures, four of them for one driver. This race was about who knew how long a set of tyres would last, and most of the grid didn't.

The front: Slow Car do the arithmetic

Heinz Fisch took pole with 1:56.618 and turned it into the most controlled race of the afternoon. Slow Car McNoPace ran both cars on the same plan: mediums in stints of about twelve laps, four stops, and softs for the final run from laps 49 and 50. Nothing exploded, nobody spun and nothing in the strategy was left to chance. Fisch only lost the lead during his own stop cycle around lap 14. By lap 20 he had it back, and he won by 38.977 seconds.

Dinger Zoomie Racing came closest in pace and lost where it hurt most. Ernest Theisen started on softs and pitted early on lap 8. He then ran mediums through to the flag and held second for most of the second half. Going into the last lap he was 2.3 seconds clear of Hisaki Shimaoka, who was on fresh softs. In sector 3 he made a mistake and posted 35.309 against his usual 32-point-something. He lost second place by 0.025 seconds after 60 laps. Mathew Geary finished fourth on the same four-stop pattern, 1:18 down and not a factor.

The midfield: stops, and more stops

Moneytron ACS mixed compounds (M, M, H, M, M, M) and made five stops per car. That brought fifth for Pintonello and seventh for Issajew, both more than three and a half minutes behind. Perder Corse went the other way with three stops and long hard-tyre stints. Marino finished sixth ahead of the whole Moneytron-Arun group. Capuzzi was ninth, with spins and an engine sound the team will not have enjoyed. Ramalingam Ahad scored eighth for Arun on five stops. His teammate Ser Cher Fernandez was out on lap 11 when his steering wheel broke in two. The race log calls it "amateurish", and it isn't wrong.

The casualties: how not to do it

Wolf GP started fourth and sixth and ran softs only. Agoston Ágh made eight stops, burst tyres three times and crashed out on lap 48. Tomas Bernardas Jelinskas went off track more often than any other driver and was retired by a tyre explosion on lap 39. Wolf left with two cars in the barriers and nothing else.

Équipe Renault Elf started both cars on hards. Both tyres burst on the same lap, lap 19. Didier Bleneau then had no suitable tyres left and retired in the pits on lap 38. Albert Augier finished tenth, 9:27 down, after five stops and four blowouts. Tenth sounds like a points finish; he was last, and ten cars were classified.

Forza Mutte Racing ran the shortest race of the day. Both cars had blowouts on lap 24, both came into the pits, and there were no tyres of the right type left for either of them. Two cars retired within three seconds of each other because the tyres ran out.

The championship

In race 1, Fisch retired with a gearbox failure. At Körfez Otorom, Slow Car McNoPace took a one-two while the direct rivals lost cars, positions or both. With eight races left there's a long way to go, but this was the kind of weekend that settles a season.

Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Evelien Pouillie took the Season 47 opener for Renttu Racing, but SGA Racing's Edmund Potts had the quickest car, and lost only because he needed a fourth pit stop. Behind them, Andrea Moda Formula made a strong start to life in the top division, while JP Suave Racing were left far adrift.

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

The name on top of the timesheet at Al-Zubarah is a familiar one. Evelien Pouillie won Division 1's Season 47 opener for Renttu Racing by 9.4 seconds, with team mate Alvaro José jr. Ferreira de Almeida third. But the race data says the winner was not the fastest driver on the day.

Potts had the pace

That was Edmund Potts. He took pole with a 1:47.663 in dry qualifying, set the fastest lap of the race on lap 2 with a 1:48.799, and over the distance was the quickest man in the field. His average lap, excluding in and out laps, was about 1:49.85, against 1:49.99 for Pouillie. That is around 0.14 seconds a lap, or roughly 7.5 seconds over the 54 laps.

It was not enough to cover the pit stops. Potts stopped on laps 10, 21, 32 and 43, an 11-lap rhythm, and each stop cost around 20 seconds from pit entry to pit exit. Pouillie and Ferreira de Almeida ran three stops. A slow 12.9 second stop for Ferreira de Almeida on lap 41, with a wheel problem, let Potts through both Renttu cars, and on lap 42 he led Pouillie by 5.4 seconds. His fourth stop a lap later dropped him to 15.3 seconds behind. He closed to 9.4 by the flag, but ran out of laps.

The message for Renttu is that they won on strategy against a faster car. For SGA it is the opposite: this looks like a car that can win the division, if the stop count works out.

Andrea Moda make their mark

The best story of the day may be Andrea Moda Formula. Daniil Viirok qualified fifth and ran as high as second on lap 10 while the leaders cycled through their stops. He passed Potts on lap 21 and finished fourth, 34.7 seconds behind the winner, on three stops. His average race pace was the fifth quickest in the field, roughly 0.6 seconds a lap slower than Pouillie and ahead of both Fenninger Racing cars. He beat Fenninger's Eulalio Nava Castillo by 9.7 seconds.

The second car of Benito Adam Negrete started 16th and finished 12th, 2:03.5 behind the winner. Pace-wise he was mid-field, and he lost about four seconds to a spin on lap 32. Both cars finished, one in the points and one on the right side of the field.

JP Suave far from the pack

At the other end, JP Suave Racing had a difficult day. The team has a works deal with MecTec, with Honda Civic engines, and it showed. Gergely Babály and Glenn Cassuto qualified 22nd and 23rd, 3.5 and 3.7 seconds off pole, and finished 21st and 22nd, more than four minutes behind the winner (4:03.0 and 4:23.7).

Their race pace was between 4.3 and 4.7 seconds a lap slower than Potts, and about a second a lap slower than the next slowest car, Arun Roughneck Racing's Oleksa Lukashenko. Cassuto's stop on lap 26 took 9.1 seconds, compared with 5.2 to 5.5 for the front runners. The chat had made the joke on Saturday. Patrick Price wrote: "Honda Civiv engine, lol".

Elsewhere

Ross Walrond (Handbrake RD) ran fourth-quickest over his 25 laps before tyre trouble ended his race on lap 26, and ElMayoGPTeam's Sriram Joshi ran dry on lap 44. Nava Castillo was fifth, Slade Aitchinson (Fenninger) sixth and Nicholai Bech Napizia (Silver Cosmos) seventh. Twenty-two of 24 cars were classified.

Pitwall Times, Season 47 opening round, Divisions 2.1 to 2.4. By Murray Ledger

Qualifying was wet in three of the four divisions, the race was dry everywhere, and the grids barely survived the first lap. Across Divisions 2.2 to 2.4, eight cars ran out of fuel, so the plans on paper mattered as much as the pace on track.

Division 2.1: Shimaoka wins, Fisch's gearbox does not

Hisaki Shimaoka won for Slow Car McNoPace by 35.7 seconds from Ernest Theisen, but only after his team mate Heinz Fisch retired from the lead on lap 45 with gearbox failure. Fisch had set the fastest lap of the race and was 21 seconds clear at the time. Theisen started eighth and finished second, and his Dinger Zoomie team mate Mathew Geary took third. Ágh (Wolf GP) lost about 25 seconds to spins from second on the grid, and Edoardo Marino passed him for fourth on the final lap. His team boss summed it up in the chat: "drat pipped at the end".

Division 2.2: Kudra from 14th

Norbert Kudra (Arrows Grand Prix International) started 14th and won by 24.8 seconds. Pole sitter Ottó Frey led the early laps, then crashed out on lap 22, which brought out the safety car until lap 25. Kudra pitted under it, took the lead by lap 29 and never lost it for long. Antonio Huhtala came from sixth to second on three stops, 0.27 seconds ahead of Afonso Azevedo, who took third on five stops after a tyre exploded on lap 5. Three cars ran dry, two from ATMI Racing and one from MacSalaatikko. RSA Racing's Shaun Jooste took the loss of Frey well: "What can you do hey."

Division 2.3: Serbian Engineering in a race of their own

Kaupo Villard led every lap for Serbian Engineering and won by 19.0 seconds from Albrecht Klöb, who had started tenth. The pair were around six seconds a lap quicker than everyone else, and Jack Jones was third, more than four minutes behind. Both Mustang Dark Horse R cars ran out of fuel by lap 11. Hassan Khechini spun on lap 1 and still took fifth with a final-lap pass on Khemais Al-Fessi. Fucho F1 had tyre bursts in both cars.

Division 2.4: Viktor wins alone

Guntram Viktor led every lap for Zeroforce F1 and won by 45.3 seconds from L. Sun of Tycoon R. INC. He set pole in the wet and never looked in danger. Rochan Satyanarayana of Leleux Racing was third.

Pirate Panda Race qualified Alejandro Estrada Ojeda and Henrique De Albreuin fifth and sixth, and both cars stopped with an empty tank on lap 10, before either had pitted. They finished 13th and 14th.

Team principal Philip commented afterwards: "A lot of things happened this week, so many things that I forgot I am the single point of failure in the entire team. Too bad there is no working standing. We will try next week."

Dan Silver had hoped this paper would give Philip a grilling for the press release. Consider it done.

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Welcome to Season 47, where the cars are new, the suppliers are (mostly) the same, and at least two entries on the grid may or may not show up at all. Quirk and Jil & Jaques Racing are both rumored to be racing under inactive management, which either means a dramatic mid-season resurrection or two teams quietly farming last place all year without anyone actually at the desk. Either way, plan your podium math for seven contenders, not nine.

Last year's business, unfinished

Start with what actually happened in Season 46, because it explains everything about how this grid lines up. Andrea Moda Formula won the title outright, running a tyre compound nobody else had access to, a genuine hardware advantage rather than a form question. Behind them, though, the real story was a three-way tie that wasn't: Philip E.'s Pirate Panda Race finished on 169 points, comfortably clear of both Joseph Stam's Zeroforce F1 and Matthias Engelmann's Jaguar Racing Team, who ended up level at 125 apiece. Panda Race were the more consistent operation, four podiums and a pole, but zero wins, they scored by showing up every week, not by being the fastest car on Sunday. Zeroforce, for all their lower points total, actually won a race, the only one of the three that did. Jaguar matched Zeroforce on points with a leaner return, two podiums, one pole, no wins, and no real explanation for how they got there other than not making mistakes.

That's the pattern worth watching into this season: Panda Race wins on reliability and consistency, Zeroforce wins on outright pace when it shows up, and Jaguar wins on simply not falling apart while everyone else does. Three different routes to the same points column, and Andrea Moda's tyre advantage is the only reason none of them mattered for the title.

The supplier reset

For the teams actually planning to compete this year, the hardware sheet is almost insultingly uniform. Everyone's on the same engine, everyone's on the same tyre, no repeat of the compound gap that decided last season. The only real split left is fuel, Molop versus Melachro, and brakes, BT-Tech doing the heavy lifting for most of the grid while Timo Kemi's Bobbo F1 and Carlos Américo's CJ Motorsport go their own way on Opuray and Underforce. Whether either choice matters or is just a supplier deal nobody read the fine print on remains to be seen.

Testing, again, told us nothing

Programs differed, stint data is still classified above Frank's pay grade, and the timesheet is about as reliable a form guide as reading the sky. One thing worth flagging anyway: Panda Race ran both drivers within three hundredths of each other across the sessions. Not proof the car is fast, don't let anyone tell you otherwise, but a decent early sign both seats can pull similar weight, which matters more this year than usual given how tightly Panda Race, Zeroforce and Jaguar finished last time out.

Outlook

With Andrea Moda's tyre edge gone from the equation, Season 47 is arguably the first fair fight between the three teams that actually mattered last year. Panda Race enters as the reigning runner-up with the strongest points record of the trio and a stated target of the title. Stam's Zeroforce has the proven race-winning pace to close a 44-point gap if Panda Race slips even slightly. Engelmann's Jaguar has quietly matched Zeroforce on points once already without anyone treating them as a real threat, which might be the most dangerous position of the three. Everyone else, Leleux, Tycoon, Bobbo, CJ, is racing for the scraps unless one of last year's top three has a genuinely bad season.

New season, new parts, same warning as always: nothing you saw in testing means anything. Lights out is the only data anyone should trust.

wichtigster unterschied, der reifenhersteller round ist geschichte - sehr schlechter reifen und teil des erfolgs v mateos team

Untangling how tyre supplier changes affect team performance.

Season 47 Preview: New Parts, Old Rivals, Possibly Two Ghost Teams
By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Welcome to Season 47, where the cars are new, the suppliers are (mostly) the same, and at least two entries on the grid may or may not show up at all. Quirk and Jil & Jaques Racing are both rumored to be racing under inactive management, which either means a dramatic mid-season resurrection or two teams quietly farming last place all year without anyone actually at the desk. Either way, plan your podium math for seven contenders, not nine.

Last year's business, unfinished

Start with what actually happened in Season 46, because it explains everything about how this grid lines up. Andrea Moda Formula won the title outright, running on Supergrip while nearly the entire field, including everyone still on this grid, was stuck on Round, a tyre bad enough to be a structural handicap rather than a competitive gap. Behind that, the real story was a three-way tie that wasn't: Philip E.'s Pirate Panda Race finished on 169 points, comfortably clear of both Joseph Stam's Zeroforce F1 and Matthias Engelmann's Jaguar Racing Team, who ended up level at 125 apiece. Panda Race were the more consistent operation, four podiums and a pole, but zero wins. Zeroforce, for all their lower points total, actually won a race. Jaguar matched Zeroforce on points with a leaner return, two podiums, one pole, no wins, and no real explanation for how they got there other than not making mistakes.

The supplier reset, and the one that actually matters

Every other supplier column is close to uniform this year, same engine, same fuel split roughly as before, Bobbo and CJ still doing their own thing on brakes. None of that decided anything last season and none of it will this one.

The tyre situation is different, and it's the whole story. Round is gone. Everyone on this grid is now on Halftrack, the same compound Andrea Moda used to beat the field with. That's not a minor supplier update, that's the removal of the exact mechanism that made Season 46 a one-team race. Panda Race, Zeroforce, and Jaguar were all fighting each other for best of the rest last year while running a tyre a full tier below the champion's. Take that gap away and the 44-point margin between Panda Race and the two teams tied for second means considerably less than it looks like on paper.

Testing, again, told us nothing

Programs differed, stint data is still classified above Frank's pay grade, and the timesheet is about as reliable a form guide as reading the sky. One thing worth flagging anyway: Panda Race ran both drivers within three hundredths of each other across the sessions. Not proof the car is fast, but a decent sign both seats can pull similar weight, which matters more now that the tyre excuse is off the table for everyone.

Outlook

This is arguably the first genuinely fair season Division 2.4 has had in a while. Panda Race enters with the strongest points record of last year's chasing pack and a stated title target. Zeroforce has proven race-winning pace and, with the compound disadvantage erased, a real case for closing the gap. Jaguar quietly matched Zeroforce on points once already without being taken seriously as a threat, which might be exactly the position from which titles get stolen. Everyone else, Leleux, Tycoon, Bobbo, CJ, is racing for the scraps unless one of last year's top three has a genuinely bad season, and for the first time in a while, nobody has a tyre to blame if they do.

By Murray Ledger, Pitwall Times

Division 2.4 has completed the first of three scheduled test sessions this season, week 1 of a 13-week calendar built around 10 races. A second test week follows immediately in week 2, with a third slotted into week 8, mid-season. Pirate Panda Race sit atop the timesheet, having run confirmed qualifying-sim laps. What anyone else ran is unclear, and this week, that uncertainty runs deeper than usual.

Team principal Philip explained why.

Ledger: Panda Race tops the test sheet. What does that mean?

Philip: Nothing. Same as test times usually mean, just less than usual this week.

Ledger: Why less than usual?

Philip: Since the latest patch, stint length and lap times for other drivers no longer show up in the data. Before, you could at least see who ran how long, even though tire type, degradation and fuel figures were never visible to begin with. Now even that's gone.

Ledger: Intentional or a bug?

Philip: Officially there's a fix that closes a data leak: a driver could still see detailed data at his former team after switching. That's documented. Whether that same fix also removed general visibility of stint length and lap times for other drivers entirely isn't stated anywhere. Could be collateral damage, could be deliberate, nobody's said either way.

Ledger: What does that mean for reading your time?

Philip: That it means nothing beyond our own garage. We know we ran qualifying-sim laps. What everyone else ran, longrun, setup test, qualifying-sim, we don't know. Before, you could at least guess from stint length. Not anymore.

Ledger: So P1 on the sheet amounts to?

Philip: Tires are better. That's it. Nice to be on top of a list that says nothing, and this week the list says even less than usual.

A season that shows where this team is headed.

THE RUBBER FACTOR

To understand Season 46 in Division 2.4, you have to start with tyres. Almost the entire field spent the season on the "Round" compound, with only two teams given access to the superior "Supergrip" compound: Andrea Moda Formula and CJ Motorsport. Pirate Panda Race was part of the Round majority, going up against a rival that dominated the season entirely on Supergrip. A good part of the gap to Andrea Moda this year comes down to that material difference, not a shortfall in driving or strategy. Running toe to toe with a team that has structurally better rubber under its cars, and still fighting consistently for podiums, is a sign this team is doing something right.

CONSISTENCY AT THE FRONT: REMO TITO

Remo Tito was the rock of this season. Podium finishes, clean races, a driving style that stays composed under pressure. From pole position at Circuit des Laurentides to a gripping fight for the top three at the season finale at Circuit du Rocher, Tito showed he has the pace to run with the best in the division, and did it on tyres that put him at a structural disadvantage against the competition.

THE NEW SIGNING: ALEJANDRO ESTRADA OJEDA

When Bilal Hallikäär was poached mid-season by record champions Renttu Racing, a compliment to the development work done in this team, 22-year-old Alejandro Estrada Ojeda stepped into the second seat. His debut at Loniari in Italy was rewarded with points immediately, a strong first outing for a young driver thrown into a new environment mid-season. Over the rest of the year, Ojeda showed a clear upward trajectory: a blistering recovery drive from P18 to P8 at Circuit des Laurentides, a podium finish in the penultimate race week. As with any young talent, there was a dip in form along the way, part of the learning curve, but the trend across the season points clearly upward.

SEASON HIGHLIGHTS

P3 for Tito at Parc de Rivemaure following a smart in-team strategy split. Debut points for Estrada Ojeda at Loniari, Italy. P18 to P8 recovery drive by Ojeda at Circuit des Laurentides. Podium for Ojeda in the second-to-last race week, as the team secured a commanding second place in the division standings. Hard-fought season finale at Circuit du Rocher, with both cars in podium contention until the final lap.

THE STANDINGS

Pirate Panda Race closes out the season in a solid second place in Division 2.4, with a comfortable gap to third and trailing only Supergrip-shod Andrea Moda Formula, who leave the division as deserved champions and promotees.

LOOKING AHEAD

With a settled lineup, a talented young driver on the rise, and a clear target of winning Division 2.4 in Season 47 and reaching Division 1 by Season 48, Pirate Panda Race heads into next season with confidence. This year's tyre disadvantage doesn't have to repeat itself, and when it doesn't, we'll find out what this team is really capable of.

**PITWALL TIMES**
*Murray Ledger | Season 46, Week 13 | Division 1 | Circuit du Rocher*

**POTTS NEW CHAMPION OF DIV 1 AS RENTTU'S TITLE HOPES BLOW UP INSIDE SEVEN LAPS**

Some championships get decided by brilliance. This one got decided by three laps of mystery and four more laps of certainty, both costing Renttu Racing, both costing the two drivers who'd spent the entire season fighting each other for a title that was, by Friday lunchtime, still separated by three points.

Renttu had already wrapped up the constructors' championship weeks ago, a formality by the time the field arrived at Circuit du Rocher. The drivers' title was the actual contest, and on Friday, Henri Kuivanen filed what will now be remembered as one of the more unfortunately timed forecasts of the season: "Driver's Championship is still open with 3p gap between Almeida and Potts. Dramatic mistake for Potts!" The dramatic mistake, as it turned out, belonged to nobody named Potts.

There were warning signs before a wheel even turned. Kuivanen spent Wednesday posting what read like increasingly alarmed thermodynamics homework — "From 63° to 2° in 11 lap stint," followed by a request for a 61-degree rise that would apparently turn "all to negative development" — the kind of message that makes complete sense to precisely one person in the room and terrifies everyone else by implication. Jussi Heikkinen, translating for the rest of us, guessed the track had quietly become a Monte Carlo rally stage. Tim Prince, more usefully, predicted that ten laps on hards would be enough to start causing problems and that the race would resemble Mario Kart. He was, if anything, being conservative.

By Sunday, the tyre situation had graduated from theory to full-blown crisis. Stop counts across the top ten ranged from six to nine. Josef Høier had the misfortune of needing a front wing repair mid-race, which — thanks to a well-documented quirk in how forced pit stops interact with strategy — sent him back out on the same worn tyres he'd gone in on, silently converting his planned seven-stop race into an eight-stopper he never signed up for. Dan Silver's verdict from the pit wall, "time for the head strategist to be sacked," was, in fairness to strategists everywhere, aimed at a piece of software rather than a human being; the wing swap itself did its job and kept Høier's race alive, which is more than can be said for several others.

Fenninger Racing's afternoon deserves its own paragraph of misery, and in fairness to them, "aggressive" undersells just how brutal the tyre wear was all weekend. Both Eulalio Nava Castillo and Slade Aitchinson had already stopped five times by lap sixty-five — and given what everyone else on this grid was dealing with, even six stops for the full distance would have counted as optimistic planning. Worth remembering: Pirate Panda Race, in a separate race entirely, found out the hard way that eleven laps on a single set was already one lap too many under a merely "normal" driver setting. Whatever Fenninger's stint lengths were built around, the tyres at Circuit du Rocher this week weren't playing along with anyone's assumptions. Then, on lap seventy-eight — the very last lap of the entire race — both Fenninger cars picked up blisters that finally let go at the same moment. The retirement message didn't mince words: "Because there are no remaining tyres of the requested type." Not a missing reserve set of one compound, the way Pirate Panda got lucky with scrubbed softs a few weeks back. Fenninger had simply burned through their entire tyre allocation keeping up with a punishing wear rate, and had nothing left to bolt on when the last blowout hit. Two cars, same team, same lap, both retiring in the pit lane with the chequered flag in sight and literally no rubber left in the garage.

Patrick Hanson provided the afternoon's most baffling strategic choice, opting for softs for reasons nobody in the chat could reconstruct, and was rewarded with a tyre explosion on the exact lap he'd scheduled his pit stop for — a finish 5:35 behind the winner and a lap time in the 1:51 range that will haunt his engineers for a while yet. "This must be what using Michelin tyres at Indianapolis feels like," offered Tim Prince, not wrongly.

None of which compares to what happened to Renttu. Evelien Pouillie's race lasted three laps before something went wrong at the back of the car — the team's own message afterward admitted they weren't entirely sure what, beyond an apparent suspension problem, only that it was enough to end her afternoon outright. Prince's dry aside that it "counts as a zero-stopper" doing most of the necessary eulogy work. Four laps later, Alvaro José Ferreira de Almeida, the man defending a three-point championship lead, had a tyre let go and joined his teammate in the garage, no ambiguity required this time. Heikkinen's response arrived within minutes: "Renttu Racing goes off to celebrate their titles on their yachts on the seventh lap of the race." Dan Silver's one-word reply, "Blimey," was honestly doing a lot of restrained work.

With both Renttu title challengers gone before a quarter of the race had elapsed, the championship effectively decided itself on track. Edmund Potts, the man on the wrong end of Friday's forecast, went out and won the race outright, converting a three-point deficit into what is now a Division 1 championship of his own. Nicholai Bech Napizia completed a strong day for Silver Cosmos in second, and Ross Walrond rounded out the podium for Handbrake RD having somehow made nine pit stops along the way — Dan Silver's closing verdict on the whole afternoon, "9 stops and a podium," summing up a race that had long since stopped making conventional sense.

Silver's sign-off after the chequered flag captured the mood better than any classification sheet could: "Well, that was manic. Glad not every week is like that." Congratulations went round to the season's new champion, and a rather more pointed good luck to MacSalaatikko and Slow Car McNoPace, both relegated out of the division and both, per Silver, warmly encouraged to fight their way straight back.

As for the drivers' championship — three points and a season's worth of tension, resolved in the time it took one mystery failure and one very clear one. Somewhere, Henri Kuivanen is rereading his own Friday post and wondering exactly which driver he meant. Edmund Potts, for what it's worth, isn't asking.