TCR Eastern Europe race weekend at Oschersleben brought a bitter-sweet start of the season for our team. Even though we managed to claim one podium thanks to Tobias Poschik.
Before the race weekend started, the testing sessions took place in the Motorsport Arena. Both new Audis had some technical issues, though, so we weren’t able to use the full potential of testing days. Our mechanics repaired the cars right before the official racing days. That's why Tobias Poschik drove the most testing kilometers and he was able to put those experiences to good use in the races.
Tobias made his official racing debut in the older version of Audi RS3 LMS TCR and he did really well even compared to the drivers in the field with newer cars. In the qualifying he set the 7th best time losing just 17 hundreds of a second to the 5th driver, which was a good position to move up the order in the race. Sebastian Steibel stood one position behind Tobias on the starting grid. Radim Adámek was struggling with a demanding track and set the last qualifying time.
In the first race, Sebastian and Tobias switched their starting positions, finishing 7th and 8th. Radim still wasn’t able to find the right pace and he finished last. At the end of the race he managed to catch up with Sebastian Kolakowski, but it was not enough to overtake.
Starting grid for the second race was set by a draw. Based on the result of the first race, ten drivers switched their positions which meant that Tobias and Sebastian started as 3rd and 4th. Tobias had a great start and he managed to take over the lead of the race. The newer cars catched up with him early and two of the drivers managed to overtake him. The 3rd place after the chequered flag is still an impressive result not just for Tobias, but for the whole team.
Sebastian was classified 9th which was a good result knowing that he drove not so much testing kilometers. Radim was able to catch up with Kolakowski during the whole race and he was patiently awaiting a mistake of the Polish driver. The opportunity to overtake didn’t come, though, so Radim was classified last again. That’s the bitter taste, otherwise the race weekend was quite good.
The most important thing is that the atmosphere in the team full of new members is flawless. All the newcomers fit into our group very well and we’re looking forward to the upcoming race weekends.
The first race weekend of the ESET Cup Series also took place at Oschersleben. Our duo Radim Adámek and Bartosz Groszek won the TCX category of the Endurance race.
Next race of TCR Eastern Europe and ESET Cup Series will take place at Hungaroring at the end of April.
