Ander Vilarino continued his championship charge with his sixth win out of six races in the Euro Racecar NASCAR Touring Series.
The Spaniard took a dominant win from pole position, followed home by Race 1 star Frederic Gabillon and Britain’s top interest, Freddy Nordstrom.
“It was a tough race,” admitted Vilarino. “Fred was fast at the start, but as the race went on our fresher tyres just helped us to pull out a gap and take the win.”
Vilarino’s car was involved in an accident in the Open Division race on Saturday afternoon, meaning he had fresher tyres fitted to his car, whilst Gabillon’s car had suffered a cut tyre in the Open race, but opted to fit older tyres that had already seen action in Nogaro.
“We had the pace this weekend to win and we’re disappointed we couldn’t get the win in the first race,” said the Frenchman, who was taken out of the lead by force in the opening race. “We were fast in the opening ten laps today but it’s such a hard place to overtake and after that we just had no chance with the tyres. It’s good for the championship to get second but we could have won this weekend.”
Anglo-Swede Freddy Nordstrom rounded out the podium places, and was adamant that Vilarino would not continue his run of wins before the race began.
“I got it wrong,” he joked after the race. “It was quite a boring race really, the gaps between us were huge. Normally there are safety cars to bunch us up but that didn’t happen today, which on one hand is a good thing as we had such a huge gap back to the car in fourth.
“I got a warning about track limits in my ear in the second half of the race and was told that if I cut another corner I’d get a drive through penalty. After that I decided to avoid the kerbs all together and just stay in third, which is not too bad as we only dropped two points to Ander, so it could have been much worse.”
The race for the top three was a fairly processional affair, with backmarkers causing the only real trouble for Vilarino. Further back down the field the most exciting battle of the day came from Javier Villa and Yann Zimmer for fourth position, the two battling right up until the chequered flag with Zimmer beating Villa to the line.
