What a close race! We’ve been LIVE at the the EFRA 1/8th Track IC Euros in Halifax, England, since Wednesday afternoon and the epic 45-minute Main Final is now finished, with Jilles Grosskamp taking the win over 19-year old Kyle Branson from the UK and Dario Balestri from Italy!
Britain’s Mark Green started from pole position after he and Jilles set a blazingly fast pace in the Semi A Final, and Mark quickly built up a lead, making a slight mistake going into the pits for his first fuel stop, then several minutes later after regaining the lead he lost loads of time to Kyle Branson and Jilles after a major mistake just before coming onto the pit chicane. This allowed Kyle and Jilles to start their own close-fought battle and forced Mark to contest Dario for third place and final spot on the podium.
From that point on, it was Jilles and Kyle trading the lead, only changing the order as they came into the pits for refueling about every 5 minutes, and for fresh control tyres after 26 and 20 minutes, respectively.
Dario Balestri and Mark fought over third for the final half of the race as Kyle attempted to close the gap to Jilles, but Jilles was able to hold the gap at up to 1.5 seconds for many laps at a time, even through lapped traffic, in the end finishing less than a second ahead of Kyle to take the win and his first 1/8th Track IC European Championship!
1/8th Track IC Euros Finishing order:
1 2 Jilles Groskamp 175/45’6.70
2 5 Kyle Branson 175/45’7.47 +0.8
3 3 Dario Balestri 174/45’0.56 +9.2
4 1 Mark Green 174/45’6.14 +14.8
5 10 Adrian Bertin 173/45’0.07 -2L
6 4 Robin D’Hondt 173/45’8.64 -2L
7 9 Simon Kurzbuch 171/45’12.36 -4L
8 8 Daniele Ielasi 168/45’9.35c -7L
9 6 Oliver Mack 163/45’5.54c -12L
10 7 Lamberto Collari 155/45’14.64c -20L
