Patrick Fankhauser wins at Swiss IC Track Nats Rd4

The fourth round of the Swiss IC Track Nationals was held at the technical Herblingen track recently. The event kicked off with five rounds of free practice on Friday afternoon followed by Saturday’s qualifications and the super pole. Marco Rizzo was able to overall TQ the 200mm class from Patrick Fankhauser who struggled a bit in the hotter track conditions on Saturday afternoon. The weather forecast for Sunday was pretty warm again with about 29 Degrees Celsius meaning huge tyre wear. At the start of the main final Marco Rizzo, Niclas Scherer and Patrick Fankhauser pulled away from the rest of the field with Traugott Schar, who started from P6, closing in after four minutes. Unfortunately an engine issue stopped his race later. Up front the battle for the first three positions was exciting with many position changes. Patrick tried to save tyres to make a full tyre change at the 25-minutes mark in order to have the fresher tyres at the end of the race as the remainder of the field changed the tyres after 20 minutes. Niclas later also suffered engine issues with Stefan Wuthrich now in 3rd position. Up front Marco Rizzo’s pit crew made a perfect tyre change, putting Patrick under pressure. With five minutes to go Patrick however was in striking distance behind Marco who slowly ran out of tyres. 4 Minutes later he was on the rims and Patrick was able to pass him for the race win while Stefan finished in 3rd place.

Source: Xray [teamxray.com]