Craft Bamboo dominates second race in Georgia
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| Written by: Fanni Váradi | Photo: TCR |
Only 15 cars showed up on the reverse grid of second race in Georgia. The Comtoyou Racing’s two times champion Stefano Comini was forced to start from box as his team could not finish repairing his car after the accident with Jean-Karl Vernay. The Volkswagen driver crashed him after first race for the reason of the Swiss driver was too aggressive in the beginning of the race while overtaking him.
Giacomo Altoé, the WestCoast Racing’s rookie, got the start well and could save his leader position in front of 2 Craft Bamboo drivers, Pepe Oriola and Hugo Valente.
Attila Tassi showed great performance, followed by an amazing start from 9th position, at first turn he was driving already on 4th place.
There was an incident in the back of the grid, when Mato Homola and Shota Abkhazava crashed. Followed by the contact, Homola got stuck in the gravel bed and the safety car had to some in.
During the end of first lap, both Craft Bamboo drivers, Oriola and Valente overtook the rookie Altoé. Few minutes later, the marshals analyzed the events, as they assumed it was already during the yellow flag session.
The safety car retired on fourth lap, when Attila Tassi overtook Altoé, who not too much later ended up in the gravel bed, and stayed there for long seconds.
In the second half of the race, a big battle started for the fifth place between GE-Force’s driver Dusan Borkovic, Craft-Bamboo’s James Nash, Zele Racing’s Ferenc Ficza and M1RA’s Roberto Colciago.
On the 10th lap Nash overtook Borkovic. A lap later, both Nash and Colciago made a mistake. Ficza took advantage on the situation and overtook both. A bit later Ficza made a mistake as well, and lost his position. On 15th lap Ficza tried to overtake Colciago, but at turn 2 he crashed the Italian driver, and his right front suspension got injured. The Hungarian driver had to retire.
The Final lap became interesting when Colciago got the break line better and overtook Nash for 6th place, but marshals analyzed the event, as they say it was during Ficza’s yellow flag session.
Craft-Bamboo’s Pepe Oriola won the race, followed by his teammate, the French Hugo Valente with the other SEAT. The French driver later got a 30 seconds penalty for overtaking during yellow flag session, and fall back to 9th place. Attila Tassi became second followed by Valente’s penalty, with Jean-Karl Vernay on third place.
GE-Force’s Dusan Borkovic finished fourth before James Nash. Roberto Colciago finished sixth but the stewards gave him penalty for the same reasons as Valente. After the penalty, the Italian driver fall to 12th place.
After the first weekend Kajaia leads the championship with 38 points, before Attila Tassi with 32 points and Pepe Oriola with 31 points.
The next round will take place in Bahrain as support race of the Formula One event.