We came back to Mäntsälä again for the 2nd ever European Championships held on a carpet surface with touring cars. After a fairly successful warm-up race a few months prior, I felt that I had a good chance to do well.
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To my big surprise, the organizer had decided to use both the same carpet and the same track layout which was used at the warm-up race. (One might question if this was appropriate for a European Championships.) However, since conditions were practically the same now as before – especially since traction rose rather quickly – I felt that my starting setup was working well in practice. As qualifying started I found myself consistently in the top 4 but with no real chance to match the top 2 drivers. After a couple of setup changes for the latter qualifiers, big improvements to the car helped me secure two 2nd position placings in the final two qualifiers which gave me the overall 3rd qualifying position. With this, I was fairly satisfied and confident going into the finals.
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In the finals I was trying as hard as I could to challenge the top 2 drivers again, but instead I had to drive defensively to prevent Marc Rheinard from coming through from 4th place. In the first final an early mistake forced me to drop back in the field and I had to catch up with the others, but I could only manage 5th. In the 2nd and 3rd finals I finished 3rd overall after some close driving with Marc; eventually he would have the upper hand, which resulted in a 4th overall placing for me. It was disappointing since I had expected at least 3rd after the great qualifying, but instead I had to settle for the same result as last year. But that’s racing… sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.
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Final results
1. Ronald Völker (DE)
2. Christer Andersson (FI)
3. Marc Rheinard (DE) 4. Alexander Hagberg (SE) XRAY T3
5. Juho Levänen (FI) 6. Teemu Leino (FI) XRAY T3
7. Viktor Wilck (SE)
8. Christopher Krapp (DE) 9. Adrian Berntsen (NO) XRAY T3
10. Viljami Kutvonen (FI)
