12th June 2011

De Vries in a class of his own - World Champs Rd 1, Day 1

Reigning World Champion, Nyck de Vries, has dominated proceedings on day one in the opening round of the World Championships at Wackersdorf in Germany.

The reigning World Champion won both races today by a huge margin.  Yet in one sense he did not have everything his own way.

Having been out-qualified by Leo Roussel he started Race 1 on the 2nd row but soon went past the Frenchman and into the lead. But surprisingly he fell back to 5th before picking his way past those in front of him to regain the lead and pull away for victory by over 6 seconds from  Karol Basz. The Polish driver had a superb battle with 3rd placed  Libor Toman ending with just 0.161 seconds between them. But perhaps the best drive of the race was by Ignazio D’Agosto who went from the penultimate row of the grid to an excellent 4th place.

De Vries jumped into a big lead from pole in Race 2, yet almost inexplicably fell back to 7th. But as in Race 1 he steadily made his way forward again and took the lead just after half race distance. He went on to win by 7.4 seconds from Ignazio D’Agosto. Chris Lock had had numerous problems earlier in the day but took a well deserved 3rd place after having been up to 2nd place earlier.

KZ1
Paolo de Conto was on course for a Double victory in KZ1 until Jonathan Thonon pipped him at the post on the Final Bend to win by 0.009 of a second:

Paolo de Conto had beaten defending champion Bas Lammers by 1.2 seconds in Race 1 with poleman Jeremy Iglesias in 3rd place:

De Conto made a lightning start in Race 2 but later in the race it seemed that Thonon might catch him. However the Belgian appeared to have lost his chance with half a lap to go until that last gasp blast around the final turn secured the narrow win with another Belgian Rick Dreezen in 3rd place.

KZ2
Italy’s Mirko Torsellini went through the KZ2 Heats unbeaten and compatriot Fabian Federer was next best with 2 wins and 2 narrow defeats. Henri Kokko of Finland was best of the rest but Joel Johannson of Sweden was unlucky with 3 wins followed by a collision and non-finish in his last outing.