EU 2000: Zolder race two notes
Double win for Ammermüller The German driver Michael Ammermüller (Jenzer Motorsport) drove to his second victory in the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0, completing a faultless performance this weekend. Jérôme d'Ambrosio (Euronova Racing) can ...
Double win for Ammermüller
The German driver Michael Ammermüller (Jenzer Motorsport) drove to his second victory in the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0, completing a faultless performance this weekend. Jérôme d'Ambrosio (Euronova Racing) can be more than happy with his efforts, having once again taken second place in front of his home crowd. The top three was completed by Junior Strous (Mr. Glow Motorsport).
Michael Ammermüller took advantage of his pole position to keep Junior Strous at bay at the first corner. The German immediately built up a lead of 1.7 seconds over the rest of the field in just the first lap! As usual in FR2.0, the battle for places in the main field was very hotly contested, leading to a collision involving Carlos Laconelli (JD Motorsport) and Hiroyuki Matsumura (Graff Racing).
Just as in the first race, very quickly Junior Strous found himself put under pressure by Jérôme d'Ambrosio.
Pippa Mann (Comtec Racing) and Cyndie Allemann (SL Formula), the two women drivers in the line-up, were involved in a violent crash during the second lap. This prompted the Race Director to bring the Safety car onto the track for six laps. More than half of the race ended up being run with the Safety car on the track and the lead built up by Ammermüller was wiped up.
But when the Safety car moved over to let the race restart, Strous continued to warm his tyres. Ammermüller needed no more encouragement to make the breakaway: he took a 6 second lead in the space of just one lap! Jérôme d'Ambrosio managed to get past Junior Strous, but any hope of winning the race evaporated for the Belgian.
Robbed of fourth place by Reinhard Kofler before the Safety car came onto the track, Yann Clairay took some consolation in fending off his friend from the SG Formula team, Romain Grosjean. Alan Hellmeister (AR Motorsport) lay in wait, ready to pounce, behind the two team mates.
The last of the points were fought over by a small group, made up of Carlo Van Dam (SG Formula), Julien Canal (Graff Racing), Adrian Zaugg (Jenzer Motorsport) and Xavier Maasen (JD Motorsport), the first three drivers finally taking the honours.
Michael Ammermüller: "I have lost many races in my time, so I am certainly not going to complain about winning! I don't really know what happened during the restart, I was following the Safety car and when it moved over I kept going at the same speed. As I was in the lead at that point, I wasn't really paying close attention to what the other drivers were doing!"
Jérôme d'Ambrosio: "It's been a great weekend with two top-three finishes in two races! The restart was strange, but I did manage to move up a place. But then the gap was just too wide to catch the leader^Å"
Junior Strous: "This is my first podium finish this season and obviously, I'm pleased with that. We changed the set-up between yesterday's race and today and it worked well today. It's not easy for us as we are a small team with only one car. I think that Ammermüller didn't follow the procedure for the rolling restart. He shouldn't have accelerated before the Start/Finish line."
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