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The
Team of Josef Kaufmann Racing returned to Formula Renault 2.0 Series
with a dominant win at Spa-Francorchamps during this weekend´s
Formula Renault 2.0 NEC meeting. After having decided to return to
the Formula Renault 2.0 Series for 2011, the Josef Kaufmann Racing
Team, for the first time this year, had two brand new Formula
Renault 2.0 Litre cars on the grid.
During
the first Free Practice Josef Kaufmann Racing Driver Robin Frijns
was directly the fastest man on the track and had set the fastest
practice time of all drivers. Côme Ledogar, who for the first time
ever drove a Formula Renault car was able to set the 10th
fastest time. After a heavy crash during the wet second Free
Practice, due to a short time break between Free Practice and
Qualifying, the Team wasn´t able to rebuild the car of Frijns
properly in time for Qualifying and Frijns was unfortunately only
able to qualify himself on P10 for both races. Côme Ledogar, who was
4th fastest during the second Free Practice, also was a
bit unluck during the Qualifying and only qualified on P11.
After
a good opening lap of Race 1, Frijns was able to climb up the
positions lap by lap. Putting fastest race laps he found himself on
a brilliant P2 at the end and directly scored the first podium in
the first ever race. Ledogar even had a better Start and moved up
directly on P4 at the opening laps. Unfortunately he spun during the
race and finished on P10.
In
Race 2, starting again from P9, a Safety Car period avoided a better
race result of Frijns, who was again able to put fastest race laps
and climbing up to P5 at the chequered flag. The race of Ledogar was
already finished in the first corner as somebody crashed into the
car of the young Frenchman.
Starting from the front row in Race 3, Frijns took over the lead of
the field after 4 laps and pulled away from the rest of the field.
Again setting one fastest lap after the other he finally dominated
the race and won by 8.6 seconds advance. Ledogar again was very
unlucky. Having already moved up to P7 he made contact with another
driver and bent his front wing. With this handicap he still finished
on P9. Overall it was a very successful return for the Josef
Kaufmann Racing Team.
Josef
Kaufmann (Team Principal):
It really was a good weekend for us here in Spa-Francorchamps. I´m
really happy that after the good start in Free Practice 1 and the
unlucky and disappointing Qualifying we had been able to recover
during the races and finally dominated the last race of the weekend.
It was a great experience for us that our car was very competitive
directly from the beginning on, as many leading teams and drivers of
the Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup had taken part at this race weekend
as well.
Now we
will concentrate on the further development of the car and we will
carry out intensive test sessions with potential drivers for next
year. We are aiming to return to the Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup in
2011 as strong as possible and we want to continue our story of
success, which we had over the last years in Formula BMW Europe. |
