19th June 2014

CIK-FIA European Championship, Genk: IAME is at the top

37 IAME drivers at the 1st round of the European KZ/KZ2 and 3rd round for the KF class: 2nd place in KZ with Dreezen and 2nd and 3rd in KF with Illott and Joyner. Almost podium in KZ2 with Lundberg, 4th overall.

KZ
Good start in KZ: the resident driver Jonathan Thonon (Praga) is 2nd only 0.028 far from the pole man. His fellow countryman Rick Dreezen (Zanardi) takes the leadership from Saturday: 9° in the qualifying practice, 2nd after the heats in front of Thonon (4th); in the pre-final the two drivers switch the positions, then in the final, Drezen confirms his performance with the 2nd place, only 4 points far from the leadership of the championship.

Unfortunately Thonon is knocked out the final due to a contact. Bad luck also affects Hajek (Praga): 8th in the time qualifying and 9th in the pre-final thanks to a great recovery of 12 positions and after difficult qualifying heats (best lap in heat 1 but out of heat 2). Too bad he leaves the final in lap 5.

Bas Lammers (Formula K), Massimo Aceto (Righetti-Ridolfi) and Sauro Cesetti (Top Kart) recover well, each of them overtakes at least 18 competitors and respectively finish 8th, 9th and 11th, confirming the competitiveness of the brand Parilla. The general result is very good: all IAME engines join the final and half of them returns home with precious points towards the championship standings.

KZ2
The IAME engines race at the top also in KZ2 thanks to the Sweden duo Douglas Lundberg (Alpha) and Joel Johansson (Righetti-Ridolfi). The first one starts with the 5th position in the time qualifying and then races very good heats (two victories and twice 2nd); then in the final he starts 5th and finishes 6th. He is 3rd in the overall standings with 18 points and so in full battle for the title. Johannson is 8th after the time qualifying, then he suffers in two heats and is so forced to recover, with success: in the pre-final (PF1) he is 6th recovering 11 positions for the start of the final where he recovers another 4 positions and finishes 7th , joining the top ten of the championship (8th). Person Torqvist (CRG) does well, from the 55th positions in the time qualifying to the 28th of the final.

KF
4 Parilla engines in the top 5. Once more the great protagonist is Callum Ilott (Zanardi): 4th in the time qualifying, 1st after the qualifying heats (3 victories out of 3 races) then 2nd in both the pre-final and the final. He is now 2nd in the overall standing only 9 points far from the leader and in full battle for the title. Tom Joyner (Zanardi), Alessio Lorandi (Tony Kart) and Martijn Van Leeuwen (Zanardi) complete the first five positions. Joyner is 10th in the time qualifying, in the pre-final he recovers the bad result of one of the heats and recovers 7 positions (6th) and in the final he completes the podium. Van Leeuwen, instead, crowns a week end started in 23rd position with the 5th place. Among the three, the Italian is the one of the big exploit: 3rd in the time qualifying and winner in one of the heats, after two bad results he is forced to the repêchage race, where he ends first.

On Sunday he shows his determination and overtakes 24 opponents among the pre-final (18th) and the final (4th). Opposite path for Felice Tiene (CRG) and Nikita Sitnikov (Tony Kart): Italian’s driver wonderful recover in the pre-final (from 19th to 8th) vanishes after a contact in the first lap of the final (25th). The Russian is as well victim of the bagarre and finishes 32nd after the 6th place in the time qualifying. Pedro Hiltbrand (CRG), Dionisios Marcu (CRG) and Karol Dabski (Praga) recover well from the time qualifying and respectively finish 11th, 15th and 16th in the final, with the Spanish starting from the 45th position!