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Sports Car Challenge race 1 & 2, Hockenheim |
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Monday, 30 April 2007 |
The Jim Clark Revival, one of Europe’s biggest gatherings of vintage and historic cars, also has a number of current racing series on the bill; this year, the Sports Car Challenge was one of them. Forraces and 2 of the 2007 season, the SCC teamed up with the German Radical Race Cup; field of 30 sportscars took the start on April 2 for the inaugural race of the year. Still recovering from his severe accident at the end of last season, Germany’s Gerd Beisel started the year in convincing fashion, with a strong drive and late challenge for victory that came good. He beat Emanuel Pedrazza of Austria in the brand new 2007 model PRC to the line by some 0.4 seconds. Behind them, Karl Heinz Matzinger in the PRC-Honda ended the 25 minute race in third place overall, winner in Division 1 for 2000cc cars after a fabulous drive through the field from a mid-pack starting position. For GT honours, Martin Brückl was without contest; and he would repeat his success in race 2.
The Sunday affair saw Lithuania’s Andrej Dzikevic in the Radical SR8
make the best of his pole position and run away with a flag-to-flag
victory. He put a margin of over a minute between himself and the rest
of the field. Saturday’s second placed finisher, Pedrazza was not so
happy with his car this time out, and left the race prematurely. Title
defender Wolfgang Payr in his new PRC-BMW and later Gerd Beisel were
the quickest pursuers, Beisel taking second place ahead of Payr. In
Division 1, Beisel’s RW team mate Yvan Haberkorn with the new
Norma-Honda was succesful ahead of Matzinger and Gerhard Münch in an
older Norma. With two entertaining races, the 2007 Sports car Challenge
is underway; next stop: the Czech Republic, with two races at Autodrom
Most on May12/13.
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