Kurzbuch claims first ENS win in Aigen
Simon Kurzbuch claimed his first Euro Nitro Series victory in Aigen, Austria, today when he won the second round of the championship ahead of 2014 title rival Robert Pietsch. The Team Shepherd driver took advantage of Top Qualifier Pietsch losing a front wheel off his Mugen to claim a popular win. Completing the Top 3 at the end of a very hot three days racing at the challenging Aigen-Schlägl track was Lars Hoppe, the German giving class newcomer ARC its first podium with last year’s race winner John Ermen taking his example to 4th.
Delighted to finally claim his & Shepherd’s first win, joining Lamberto Collari, Pietsch and Ermen as the only race winners of the high profile championship, Kurzbuch said tyre strategy was key to his success. After a poor start dropped him to fourth, his mechanic not releasing his car on the start tone, the Swiss ace said stopping twice for only new right side tyre and a full change midway through the 45-minute encounter meant he could drive without having to worry about the track’s high tyre wear. He said apart from the start everything else was perfect in the race describing his Velox V8 as ‘amazing’. Stopping for fuel at 4:30 ‘to be safe’ he said his new Novarossi Mito 9C ran faultless, the multiple World Championship finalist missing out on the overall TQ due to engine issues in the final two qualifiers. On seeing Pietsch’s tyre issues he said was able to drive safe to the finish. With the win putting him 4-points in front in the championship standings from Dario Balestri, he said he is already looking forward to Round 3 at Ettlingen in Germany a track he recently tested at. Kurzbuch’s Shepherd team boss Patrick Schafer had a good A-Main, having bumped up from the B-Main to claim the 12th & final spot on the grid he would finish the race 6th.
Working to a two tyre stop strategy, changing all four Contact tyres on his Mugen every 15-minutes, Pietsch said the race started out pretty good. Describing it as a ‘super intense race’ with Kurzbuch a strong challenger, the German said his second set of tyres had a problem with one wheel having a bad vibration. Hitting the curbing however worse was to come as the contact caused a front wheel to part company with his Picco powered MRX-5. Having to drive half a lap on three wheels he would lose 10-12 seconds getting back to the pits. With super quick work from his pit crew of Edo Picco and Marco Muscara, who recorded the fastest tyre stop of the race, he was quickly back on his way on new tyres but the unscheduled stop meant he would have to do an extra fuel stop over the race and also have to run longer on his third set of tyres. He said while frustrated to lose the win, second together with the TQ bonus point was not so bad but having had problems with missing screws at Round 1 in Bologna the former World Champion said he hoped Ettlingen would bring better luck.
Equaling his previous best result, a 3rd at Hockenheim last season then driving for Team Shepherd, Hoppe said today was a very good showing for ARC and for a new car to have four in the final was a great achievement. Commenting on his race the German said 3rd was ‘the maximum result’ he could have got due to his Reds Racing powered R8.0 being a little harder to drive than qualifying yesterday. This he said made it a ‘very hard race’ and while he pushed the entire race ‘it was not easy’. Running a two tyres stop strategy on 15 and 30-minutes he said this worked well and overall it was an incident free race.
Team-mate Ermen, who started from 10th after a difficult qualifying, described his fourth place finish as ‘pretty great actually’. The Dutch driver said problems finding a set-up at the start of the weekend left him on the back foot in qualifying but in the A-Main practice session he said the got it figured out. He said starting so far down the grid he lost a lot of time working his way to the front, an intermittent slipping one way also delaying him, and by the time he got fourth Hoppe was too far ahead to challenge. ‘Very happy with (the) result’, he said it was something solid to build on for the next ENS encounter in a months time.
Starting and finishing 5th on his debut with WRC, team-mate & Round 1 podium finisher Andrea Pirani finishing 11th, Daniele Ielasi said the result was ‘the maximum for today’. Describing the Aigen circuit’s conditions as ‘unique to this track’, the Italian said it was hard to find the right set-up and for that reason his tyre wear was ‘extreme’. Having to change tyres earlier than everyone else he said ‘after 30-minute I wanted to stop’. With a month and an Italian National race to help him get more acquainted with his GTX he said Round 3 should be better.
Having made a very strong start, Round 1 Top Qualifier and race runner up Dario Balestri ran second for the first third of the race. Contact with a backmarker who he said ‘was stopped in the middle of the track’ would damage the Capricorn driver’s bodyshell and mounting posts leaving him to lose pace for the rest of the race. Having made a huge step forward with his pace in the final qualifier, the Italian said he was very happy with the car/engine package he had for the final along with a good strategy and it was frustrating to have suffer such a stupid incident and finish 8th after being in contention for the lead.
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