PORSCHE CARR ERA CUP
Last year Dino Zamparelli tied on scores with Charlie Eastwood but missed out on the Carrera Cup crown by having fewer wins. This year Zamparelli was just two points shy of Tio Ellinas after being the man to beat for most of the season.
It’s no wonder he says: “I’m quite philosophical about it – I believe it wasn’t meant to be.”
He took four non-reversed grid race one wins – while no other driver managed more than one – in an impressive campaign that featured six other podiums.
But it was two moments of bad luck that cost Zamparelli the title. The first was in race one at Oulton Park when he was following leader Tom Wrigley, who hit a marker post that flicked up and pierced the radiator on Zamparelli’s Redline machine. The second was when he was leading the first race in the Brands Hatch finale when he spun on Dan Vaughan’s coolant.
“I did everything right until lap four – it was absolutely spot on,” says Zamparelli. “I qualified right up there, got into the lead, was comfortable and was heading into my fifth race win. And then there was coolant down from Dan Vaughan.
“I saw the flag, I saw the debris but it was too late. Everything happened too fast. The slippery surface flag can mean anything and I thought it was for the debris.
“It’s just frustrating. If we had last year’s rules, I could’ve won the second race.”
He’s referring to the switch to the reversed grid from the previous system of second fastest qualifying times setting the race-two order. Instead of being back up at the front for the finale, he started 13th and only progressed to fifth, while third for Ellinas was enough for the Cypriot to seal the crown.
“The [narrow points] margin wasn’t so much of an issue it was more the manner in which it was lost that really hurt,” adds Zamparelli. “Those two weekends certainly cost me about 25 points, a lot. It’s never happened in my four years of Carrera Cup, I’ve never spun out on someone else’s coolant.”
While Zamparelli was unlucky, Ellinas was in a position to fully capitalise.
The ex-gp3 racer had a tricky debut season last year as he made the switch from singleseaters to sportscars. And a move from JTR to the small Slidesports squad raised eyebrows. But Ellinas upped his game this year.
“I was always up there and I had 13 podiums out of 16 races and that was key,” he says. “It was very difficult [at the start] with Slidesports because we didn’t have the pace of the others, trying to find the best set-up on the car. It was a bit of a miracle [to win] because Slidesports is only in its second year in the championship with no data, everything was new, and we were fighting people like Redline with many years of experience.”
Ellinas only won one race all year, but is quick to point out: “Michael Ammermuller had one win in the Porsche Supercup and he won the championship, it’s all about consistency.”
But it was consistency of a different kind for Zamparelli as he finished runner-up for a third year in succession.