Klausner & Singer wins Austrian Nationals Rd1

Last weekend saw the first of six rounds of the Austrian National championship run at the MRC Frühwirth Sollenau track, which has been off the National calendar for some years because of a very strange rule, which was canceled at the last AGM of the Austrian federation. With total 69 entries we saw good competition in both classes.

Qualifying 1:8
1. Patrick Wendy Serpent/Mega
2. Michael Klausner Mugen/Novarossi
3. Gerhard Kandelhart Xray/Orcan

Qualifying 1:10
1. Gerhard Kandelhart Xray/Orcan
2. Manuel Singer Xray/RB
3. Stefan Mayrhofer Capricorn/Novarossi

In the Semi finals all favorites managed the way into the final with Klausner and Singer starting from pole for their respective 30 minutes finals. From the beginning of the 1:8 final Klausner was leading, until to 16 minutes mark where a very bad tire change cost him the lead allowing Xray/Novarossi driver Christian Schiff to lead. But he tried to run without a tire change and a very bad handling around 20 minutes and very slow tire change cost him several places. So at the end we got the following final result:

1. KLAUSNER Michael – 114L 30:02.555
2. PUCHER Herfried – 113L 30:04.257
3. KANDELHART Gerhard – 113L 30:08.116
4. MIHELIC Nejc – 111L 30:03.403
5. SCHIFF Christian – 111L 30:05.307
6. GRANDINGER Peter – 110L 30:00.297
7. RÖSLER Christian – 110L 30:08.901
8. WENDY Patrick – 110L 30:15.014
9. LEO Alphons – 67L 18:47.448
10.LEVY Alain – 9L 2:47.170

In the 1:10 final the first 15 minutes saw a direct battle for the lead between Singer and Mayrhofer, but a empty fuel tank a few meters before the pit lane cost Mayrhofer nearly one lap, he was pushing hard and reducing the distance to the leader. 5 minutes to go Singer also had a flame out with an empty fuel tank in the pit lane and so the top 3 (Singer, Furtner+ Mayrhofer) closed up together again and were only separated by a few meters. 3:20 minutes before the end Mayrhofer on position 2 was risking too much, doing the fastest lap with 16.085 and directly after had a crash were the body came off putting him out. 2 minutes to go Furtner had to do an additional fuel stop, but his mechanic was doing “bad refueling” and he had to came in for Stop&Go. Afterwards he was going out too fast from the pitlane and crashed a car which resulted in a second Stop&Go penalty. So Singer could run easily to a win, only few meters after the finishing line after the 30 minutes final the car ran out of fuel.

1. SINGER Manuel – 104L 30:02.246
2. FURTNER Richard – 103L 30:05.843
3. MOSER Björn – 103L 30:17.284
4. PITTNER Martin – 102L 30:05.219
5. VÖLKER Christian – 100L 30:08.320
6. MEISINGER Michael – 99L 30:08.405
7. BERGER Hermann – 98L 30:10.462
8. KANDELHART Gerhard – 93L 30:01.645
9. MAYRHOFER Stefan – 92L 26:40.846
10.KATZMAYER Jochen – 68L 25:18.216

Thanks to Michael Selner for the report.