Steve Deblaere wins Formula class at Tonisport Masters

The Tonisport Masters was held at the Arena 33 track in Andernach last weekend. The high-grip track in combination with the mandatory Volante tyres and CS additive made for a level playing field but the fun didn’t stop here. Tonisport organisers Andreas Reifferscheidt and Sebastian Meiborg introduced a whole new system to spike up the racing. The practice rounds were still held according to the normal rules; five minute heats with a ranking list based upon the best three consecutive laps. For qualifying however, the single best lap time would be accounted for. The racers had to strategically make a run of a maximum of eight laps in a ten minutes period. As there were four qualifying rounds, each driver’s single best lap time would decide their final grid position, more or less like in full scale racing.

The master of qualifying proved to be Belgian driver Steve Deblaere. He outpaced Davide Carbone, Matteo Berlincioni, Jacques Libar and Bjorn Frederickx. For the finals the organisers decided to ditch the usual triple five minute runs in favour of two ten minute long legs with the overall results being decided by position and time.

In the opening final, Steve took the hole shot and looked set for an easy victory. Jacques Libar however had a different scenario in mind and moved his way up from 4th on the grid to 2nd when he started to challenge Steve for the lead. Steve kept his cool and took the win in front of Jacques, Andreas Reifferscheidt, Davide Carbone and Florian Joos – the latter being on pace, but he couldn’t challenge the top drivers as his car was severely damaged in a first corner pile-up.

In the second final, Steve again took the hole shot and he was followed closely by Davide Carbone. Davide lost his 2nd spot to a hard charging Jacques and was forced into a mistake on lap 11, which ended his race. At that moment, Florian was sitting in P3 and the 14-years old Belgian driver would be promoted into the lead when Steve and Jacques collided on lap 13. Florian kept his cool for the next 21 laps, despite a hard charge from Jacques to take the win when Jacques made a mistake on lap 34. The A2 results saw Florian Joos, Libar Jacques, Steve Deblaere, Andreas Reifferscheidt and Daniel Mateos in the top 5 and overall it was Steve with the win from Florian and Jacques.

Formula final results:
1. Steve Deblaere – Serpent
2. Florian Joos – Shepherd
3. Jacques Libar – VBC Project Godspeed
4. Andreas Reifferscheidt – VBC Project Godspeed
5. Davide Carbone – Xray
6. Daniel Mateos – VBC Project Godspeed
7. Philipp Steringer – Shepherd
8. Nils Heimlich – Shepherd
9. Matteo Berlincioni – Fenix
10.Bjorn Frederickx – Xray

Source: Shepherd [team-shepherd.com]