Martinelli & Fankhauser win at Swiss IC Track Rd2

The second round of the Swiss IC Track Championship was held at the iconic Lostallo track this past weekend. Saturday’s qualification was held in mixed weather conditions with the day starting off dry but becoming a wet affair during the lunch break. In the 1/8th class it was Luca Martinelli with the TQ from Mattia Pesenti, Ales Haydekr and Jürg Nydegger. The final then saw Mattia Pesenti leading the field in the opening stages, however a crash with another driver at the 12-minute mark disturbed his race as he had to change tyres. A few minutes later Mattia was already chasing Luca Martinelli for the lead but a longer than expected tyre change 18 minutes to the end was another set back for Pesenti. Mattia then tried his best to close in on the leader again but he would run out of tyres and had to settle for 2nd overall behind Luca Martinelli. Rudi Scherrer came in 3rd to round out the podium.

In the 200mm Nitro Touring class it was Marco Rizzo with the TQ from Patrick Fankhauser, Traugott Schär and Marco Tanner. The A-main at first saw the fight of Patrick, Traugott and Marco for the win but Marco had to retire with engine issues while Traugott was leading and pulling away from the field. Some 18 minutes into the race Patrick was able to take the lead and at the 20-minute mark it began to rain for about five minutes. However the track was drying up very fast and his team decided to make a full tire change after 25 minutes as the tyre wear was much higher than last year. In the closing stages Traugott seemed faster than Patrick, but with flawless driving and a perfect strategy Patrick would win the final in front of his two team mates Traugott Schär und Stefan Wüthrich.

Source: Xray [teamxray.com]