Adrian Bernsten wins Rd5 to take Norwegian Winter Series title

The 5th and final round of the Norwegian national winter series was held in Moss, a city 50 km south from Oslo the weekend of March 14th and we received a report from European Indoor Junior Champion Adrian Bernsten. The race was held at Borg Miniracing clubs new permanent track and that meant that the drivers had an opportunity to do some pre-testing before the race. Due to the technical layout, I didn’t have a good feeling before the race, because I hadn’t managed the layout were well on earlier practice.

When we came to the club race which was, as always, held the day before the ‘real’ competition on Sunday, I surprised myself with putting a much higher pace than on training. I improved my fastest lap time, from 12.0 to 11.4. This made me get a lot of confidence before the race on Sunday, because my lap times were pretty much faster than the other drivers.

So before the race on Sunday, it was clear that it wouldn’t be a fight between the drivers for the 1st place, but it would be a fight for the 2nd place between the other drivers. The big favourite for securing the 2nd place were Tamiya driver Petter Berntsen, followed by Xray driver Joakim Nicolaisen.

When the qualification round started, I sat the early pace and finished 26 laps in 5:06:296. This would be the TQ time, because I couldn’t manage to drive faster than that in the other qualification round. The 2nd spot went to Petter after driving 25 laps in 5:10:568. This was 1 second ahead of Joakim’s fastest qualification round. He drove 25 laps in 5:11:584.

Top 3 after qualification
1. Adrian Berntsen (Xray T3)
2. Petter Berntsen (Tamiya)
3. Joakim Nicolaisen (Xray T3)

For the first final, I made a clean start and pulled away and led from start to the end. Petter Berntsen was unlucky and crashed. After the 5 first laps, Xray had the three first spots. Me first, Joakim Nicolaisen in second and Marius Nicolaisen in third. Unfortunately, Marius crashed, and got a DNF. After a bad start, Petter started to catch up drivers, one after the other. He got all the way from 9th place to 3rd, only 4 tenth of a second, behind Joakim in 2nd.

In the 2nd final, we got a more clean start than in the first final. I’ve got a lot higher pace than the rest of the drivers and I had between 5 tenth to 1 second faster lap times than the rest of the drivers. Petter got his fastest absolute time in this final, and finished 1 lap in front of Joakim in 3rd, but also 1 lap and 4 seconds behind me. We both made too many small mistakes, so I hoped for driving a clean run for the next final. It was clear, I had won the race and took also the overall national winter series championship.

For the 3rd final, I hoped to make a clean run, without doing any mistakes at all, and also make a fast run. I started with a very high pace, and kept running that fast until the end. I had the fastest lap time in 11.336, with a medium time of 11.399 after 27 laps. I drove 27 laps in 5:07:783, two laps in front of Petter who claimed the 2nd place in the race and in the overall winter series championship. Joakim got the 3rd place in the race, but it was Christer Antonsen who got the 3rd place in the overall winter series championship.

Top 3 finishers
1. Adrian Berntsen (Xray)
2. Petter Berntsen (Tamiya)
3. Joakim Nicolaisen (Xray)

Top 3 overall winterseries
1. Adrian Berntsen (Xray)
2. Petter Berntsen (Tamiya)
3. Christer Antonsen (Hot Bodies)

Thanks to Adrian Bernsten for the report.