New name, same story as Ekstrom wins
ETOURING CAR WORLD CUP PAU (FRA) 7-8 MAY ROUND 1/7
The start-up Pure ETCR series has transitioned into the FIA etouring Car World Cup this year, with a continuation of its innovative and experimental format and its form man, 2021 champion
Mattias Ekstrom.
It retains its two parallel racing routes for the six cars shared by two drivers apiece, but the does-what-it-says-onthe-tin Pool A and Pool B have received a lexicon update to ‘Fast’ and ‘Furious’. Ekstrom took the ‘Furious’ route to be crowned ‘King of the weekend’ in Pau, while Adrien Tambay and Tom Blomqvist were 1-2 in the ‘Fast’ pool to secure an overall top three lockout of the event for Ekstrom’s own EKS Cupra team.
It wasn’t all smiles for EKS, which has replaced Zengo Motorsport as Cupra’s ETCR team – Jordi Gene crashed heavily at the Croisement chicane in one-shot qualifying and caused a big Saturday morning repair job.
The first races, dubbed quarter-finals despite the lack of a knockout system, occurred later that day. Each three-lap bout featured three cars, with results determining semi-final grids. Drivers had qualified using 500kw (approximately 670bhp), but the cars’ full performance was only available for 40 seconds now as a boost to the regular race 300kw.
Ekstrom took ‘Furious’ pole by half a second, but pushed his team into making tweaks so “I can use the peak of the tyres better because I didn’t feel I could nail it”, and the reward was a car even better optimised for the three-lap sprints.
He was the only driver to complete his quarter-final, as Mikel Azcona (Hyundai) and Giovanni Venturini (Romeo Ferraris Alfa Romeo) rubbed wheels and immediately broke the Giulia’s steering, while Azcona pitted and finished a lap down. Hyundai’s Jean-karl Vernay dominated against Ekstrom’s teammates in the ‘Fast’ pool, but was then disqualified for running at 400kw.
That sent Vernay to ‘Fast’ semi-final two and promoted Romeo Ferraris’s Maxime Martin to semi-final one, which was a Tambay-led EKS 1-2. The strategic use of boost did increase tension, as Blomqvist just held off Martin.
Venturini’s car had to be reset and repaired for Luca Filippi to drive it in semi-final two, an even closer-fought race. Filippi barged past Vernay for second on lap two, but Vernay then used his boost to get back alongside up the hill and initially kept with winning team-mate Norbert Michelisz. Filippi, meanwhile, dropped way back in third with car concerns.
Ekstrom’s set-up changes resulted in ‘Furious’ semi-final one victory, while Venturini just won semi-final two, but couldn’t do his super-final because Filippi had clashed again with Vernay in the eight-lap ‘Fast’ super-final on the climb to Pont Oscar hairpin. Filippi was launched twice into the barriers, the impacts destroyed the car’s front and rear-left corners, and could force a withdrawal from next week’s round at Istanbul Park.
The ‘Furious’ super-final was a thrilling duel between Ekstrom and Azcona. Victory for the Swede ensured that he got more points from his weekend than ‘Fast’ winner Tambay to be crowned king. It was a near-perfect way to fly ahead of schedule on EKS’S targets, and end a stressful fortnight both professionally and personally for Ekstrom with TCR, rallycross and the death of his father.