Bernd Hasselbring wins 200mm at 40+ Euros

The EFRA Nitro On-Road 40+ European Championship took place at the famous La Turbie track in Monaco with its fast and flowing layout and the challenging bumps in the Parabolica corner. The practice sessions of the 1/10th 200mm class had Germany’s Hartmut Rose, Daniel Grosso (Monaco), Alexander Naumov (Russia) and Bernd Hasselbring (Germany) pulling the fastest laps and it was obvious that these drivers would be hot candidates to battle for the 40+ title. Come qualifying things looked a bit different as one or the other driver struggled to convert a single fast lap into consistent 5 minute runs.

Going into the final rounds of qualifying things had settled a bit and Bernd Hasselbring took TQ. In the 45 minute final Bernd was able to pull away from the field immediately opening a gap of several seconds until he rolled his car on lap 6 costing him about 10 seconds. This let Harmut slip by and the two Xray team mates now were in the lead. After the second fuel stop disaster stroke for Hartmut when his car lost the 2nd gear allowing Bernd to take the lead again. Hartmut was able to continue the final but the question was if his Orcan engine would survive the torture of running at very high revs. Up front Bernd continued to build a gap on the field being two laps ahead of Hartmut and Alexander around the 25 minute mark. A full speed crash on the main straight let Bernd’s blood pressure raise again with 10 minutes to go but fortunately nothing broke so he was able to concentrate on bringing home the win that was still in doubt due to his risky tyre strategy but after 45 minutes and 152 laps he crossed the finish line some three seconds ahead of Alexander Naumov (Xray) with Hartmut Rose (Xray) finishing another two laps down in third.

Final results:
1. Bernd Hasselbring
2. Alexander Naumov
3. Hartmut Rose
4. Christer Jansson
5. Giuseppe D’Arrigo
6. Arnaud Vasquez
7. Gabor Laszlo
8. Helli Spreng
9. Thierry Morandi
10.Daniel Grosso

Source: Xray [teamxray.com]