Dramatic start of the season saw ups and downs. Calvet was a star, with Lacko unlucky.
And they are especially valuable, considering how the events unfolded at the circuit named after a motorcycling legend Marco Simoncelli.
The French youngster Calvet started a new season in a style. He took 3 wins in the Goodyear Cup classification and then added one 3rd place finish. On the other hand, Adam finished in 5th place in two races, while he had to retire in the other two.
“Both drivers fought very hard. Téo has fulfilled his goal, to become a Goodyear Cup leader. That’s probably the best surprise of the weekend because we did not expect him to do so well. Adam had a rough weekend, probably the worst start of the season ever. But I know him, he’s a fighter and he’ll be back even stronger. I expect him to fight for the win next time at Hungaroring,” believes the team manager Fabien Calvet.
“It was a good weekend in general, even though there’s still room for improvement. I’ve achieved my goals and have four Goodyear Cup trophies. It could have been even better in the overall standings, as I struggled a bit sometimes, but we had some really tough battles on the track,” said the 21-year-old French, who now leads the Goodyear Cup with 18 points advantage over a British driver Brereton. In the overall standings, he currently holds 6th place, together with Adam Lacko.
The closest he got to the podium was in his final race of the weekend, in which he had finished in 4th place. “I started from pole position. I had a good pace, but then I made a stupid mistake that Sascha Lenz quickly utilised. Then there were two big attacks from Jochen Hahn and Antonio Albacete, but that’s racing,” knows Téo Calvet.
If there was an update to some Czech proverbs, one could say “be as unlucky as Lacko in Misano” and that is so true, for the 2017 European champion!
In the opening race already, he felt how tough is the experienced Antonio Albacete. “I had a contact with Albacete, and he took off my rear tyre! I had to do the last 7 laps without it, so the 5th place, in the end, is not so bad,” explained Adam Lacko his troubles.
But it got even worse on Saturday in a handicap race. He was fighting René Reinert for a win when he had another unlucky touch. And this time, he had to retire. “We got hooked into each other in such a bad way, that his rear bumper touched my steering column. It got totally twisted and I had to retire. The truck stopped turning and it was more off-road racing rather than circuit racing at that point,” explained the 37-year-old.
The main Saturday race then brought another 5th position, in the end, before another traditional portion of bad luck. At the start of a reverse grid race, Lacko had the leading Iveco of André Kursima right ahead of him. However, the German driver instead of hitting the accelerator started to slow down. And the Czech driver had not a chance of avoiding such an obstacle on the main straight at Misano. That led to contact, with another one coming just a few laps later in another big battle. And that one was the final one, as Lacko had to retire.
“André Kursim’s throttle pedal cracked. I had no chance of avoiding him, so I hit him really hard. That probably brought us all the bad luck, because, after that, I was just going from truck to truck. In the end, my front tyre burst, and you can’t race with that,” added Lacko.
The championship continues on June 11-12 with Round 2 at Hungaroring.
