Starting off with this Saturday, we saw a Spark Plug filled up with 19 drivers, of which a lot were using the opportunity to train a bit for the big race later that day. The fights were absolutely beautiful and in the end – a new face in the Spark Plug saw the chequered flag first: Lars Blümke – a german driver, who has been seen in a few races in the past week. If he might be interested in driving for TWS in season 2 is something, we can’t know for sure yet.

After the thrilling sprint race, it was time for the TWS practise, and it was clear from the start, that this race is going to be competitive. Stattin putting in fast time after fast time made us think, that the race is already decided if he could keep the improvements up, but the other drivers had some skill to show aswell. Qualifying made it even more interesting, when Stattin held the pole for quite some time, until Oskar Tomala (Latvian Lightning Locomotives – Reserve for Kristers Kudlis) set the fastest time with a 1:30:300 with almost no practice at all! In the paddock, we saw the Latvian Locomotives already whispering about a crazy strategy, which would lead to the 1-2 win in the race later on. With his mind blowing speed, Evan Ghelos put it on the podium in P3, which grants even more important points for Italczech Racing, who not only had a hard start into the season, but also saw Lukas Gruber retiring today. In his own words, he is unsure if he will remain in the Tatuus for the next season. More on that in the future maybe.

What overshadowed the win of the Latvians was a controversial crash, that is still being reviewed by the stewards to this moment: The last lap saw Bruscino (Arrownet SSI) losing it at the 2nd to last corner, collecting Lobkov in the process. Trying to rejoin, Bruscino parked the car halfway on the racing line coming to a standstill, while the upcoming Stattin, in 4th place at that point throws it into Rindt, where he found Lobkov and Bruscino standing. Unable to avoid that car, Stattin hit Bruscinos car with full force, destroying the engine and getting to an unfortunate race end between the last turn and the pit entry. Discussion went into the night, with Stattin and Lobkov discussing the minute details of the crash. Whatever the stewards will decide – we will for sure make a separate post out of it.

The after-race interview: “What did you think about Red Bull Ring?”

“no comment.” ~Tyler Schlebusch

“i liked it but i just lost focus” ~Floristeanu Filip

“If I hadn’t of messed up my pitstop I would had points” ~Mitch Fusco

“A lot of mixed emotions really. Had a banger of a start going from P5 to P2 and fighting for the win then proceed to lead for a few laps, but at the end of the day I just didn’t have enough pace to keep up with the others. We had wheel to wheel duels for most of the race and while that was exhausting but really fun so yeah, I guess we got lucky with what happened to Stattin at the last corner but yeah. Quite disappointing result honestly but we’ll keep pushing next week” ~Matt Contreras

“Loved 100% would do it again 🙂 I also thought i drove safe so thats what matters” ~Matei Olteanu

“network issue ruined my race” ~James Flanagann

“i had an incident at lap 1/ turn 4 where burght spun into me (not entirely his fault) and i ended up in the gravel with yellow front wing. after that it was ok, i only made a few strategy mistakes” ~Evan Ghelos (finished 3rd)

“Well, it was definitely not what we expected. We were confident before the race, but “something went wrong” during the race. We will use this race experience to be prepared better for future races” ~Yury Lobkov

“The issue was confidence on the hard tyre it felt like driving on ice. I didn’t optimise the setup for confidence on the tyre and it was more focused to qualifying and mediums. Shown by the qualifying pace over race pace” ~Ciaran Yates

“i mean we got points, i gained places from quali, i did some incidents. Pretty average race, ngl. could have been better could have been worst” ~Gioele Frisa

“Monster start, got a drive-through late in the race due to my error. Unfortunate but we move on to Grobnik.”

“We had our fun, we knew it is a circuit that needs its proper time to master, so we weren’t disappointed with the results. We hope we will be able to put more effort in the next races, Grobnik is gonna be lit.” ~Claudio Diana