Giesa & Hasselbring win EFRA 40+ titles

The EFRA European 40+ championships took place this week at the Wiesbaden RC Speedway in Germany. A yearly gentleman’s race, the race has classes for 1/8th 4wd, 1/10th 200mm and the Classic 2wd class. A well run event, this year’s host club did a great job with the organization, with the technical track allowing for some great on track action. Top qualifier in the 1/8th scale class was Serpent driver Andreas Giesa, the only person to get 30 laps in qualifying, while in the 1/10th scale class it was Andreas Weyhoven who took the top spot. With no direct qualifiers both men would still have to do battle in the semi finals to ensure a place in the main final.

In the 1/8th scale final the spectators were treated to a race long battle between German Andreas Giesa and Swiss driver Jürg Nydegger. With a different pit strategy the pair were constantly taking turns leading the race. In the last 4 minutes, with all stops done, Shepherd driver Nydegger was half a lap behind Giesa but was closing fast. He unfortunately made a mistake hitting a board and damaging his wheel which took the pressure of Andreas who would go on to take the win, with Jürg taking 2nd and another Shepherd driver Olaf Engelmann in 3rd.

Asked after the race his thoughts Andreas explained how he found it to be a very exciting race with the ongoing battle. Despite having a small advantage with his fuel stops, which were a bit faster, his tire change was slower losing 4 seconds. Jürg was equally enthusiastic about his race, and the battle with Andreas, saying he had to push hard during the entire final and even though he received a stop & go for bad refueling he knew he could catch the leader but after damaging his front and rear wheel in the final minutes he could only limp to the finish even though his pit crew had replaced the rear tires.

German driver Olaf Engelmann was very excited to be on the podium and found the 45 minutes very long to drive but enjoyed it a lot. He found his car difficult to drive as the racing line was very narrow and a small step outside that resulted in a few corners of bad traction due to marbles being picked up by the tires. Having hit one of the marshals who wasn’t paying attention he was very happy with the result, especially considering the gap with 4th place was only a few seconds.

In the 1/10th 200mm final there too was a lot of battles and while it wasn’t bumper to bumper like in the 1/8th final the racing was very exciting at the end as the different tire and fuel strategies meant the top 3 racers closed together, finishing only seconds apart. It was Xray racer Bernd Hasselbring that took the victory from Hartmut Rose in 2nd and Ralf Krause in 3rd.

Hasselbring firstly wanted to thank his mechanics, Merlin Depta and Sabrina Lechner, and say that his strategy worked out very well as he didn’t stop for a tire change. He had some traction roll at the beginning but managed to keep the car in one piece but was not able to push the car, needing to save his tires. In the final minutes of the race his car was suffering from long worn out tires but he could stay ahead of 2nd place by just 1 second at the flag.

Runner up Hartmut Rose led the race from the start and changed all 4 tires, but it was a flame out after one of his stops which saw him lose out on the win in the end. Ralf Krause had a bad race with everything that could go wrong, going wrong. He lost a lap at the start of the race when he was involved in a crash and then his 2nd fuel stop was too late which saw him flame out. After that his engine was too rich so he dropped 2 laps back on the leader, but at the end managed to get back on the lead lap only to get a stop & go for bad refueling, meaning he ended up in 3rd.

Full results can be found here.

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Thanks to Ruben d’Arco for the report.