Estoril : two out of two for Pulcini-Hites and Oregon Team

Benji Hites and Leonardo Pulcini rounded a perfect weekend by taking a second win at Estoril. The Oregon Team duo won also Race 2, after another perfect performance, beating the Optimum McLaren on Nick Moss and Joe Osborne. The Italian-Chilean pair obviously lead the standings, having collected a maximum of points. Like yesterday, Reema Juffali and Adam Christodoulou won in Pro-Am at the wheel of the Theeba Mercedes/SPS Mercedes, but this time they also made it to the overall podium. On their side, Alex Hrachowina and Martin Konrad, in their return to the series, were back to the top step of the podium in the Am class with the Mercedes of Mann-Filter Team Landgraf.

THE RACE - the first time in pole, Karol Basz had a perfect kick-off, taking the lead ahead of Jefferies, Christodoulou, Hites and Van Berlo. The first laps were pretty quiet, with Valente leading the second group ahead of Baud, Moss and Korzeniowski, first among Am cars.

In the lead, the gap of Basz remains minimal, half-second by lap 6, with Christodoulou and Hites also very close, while Jackson and Cuhadaroglu get in contact, with the Brit spinning and then going into the pits to retire and the Turk getting a penalty of 5 seconds on top of visible damage at the front end.

In lap 11, Jefferies catches Basz and start dueling with the Pole, while the close fight between Van Berlo and Valente leads to a contact and a spin of the Lambo, with both being passed by Korzeniowski. In lap 15, the presence of cars to be lapped allows reshuffling the momentarily the positions between the leading three cars, but Basz manages to retrieve the lead and pull away a bit from Jefferies and Christodoulou. At the same time, the pit stop window opens. The Ferrari of Fumanelli is forced back to the pits to retire after the driver change after losing bodywork parts following the earlier incident.

Following all driver changes, Zeimian leads by 4 seconds on Juffali and 6 on Marcin Jedlinski. Further aback are Pulcini, Gilardoni, Osborne, Jans, Laber and Mettler, while Konrad is first among Am ahead of Sak Nana and Stanley.

In the final laps, Pulcini’s charge will bring him to take the lead and cruise to a second win, with Osborne doing the same up to 2nd while Juffali clinched another Pro-Am win and podium overall, following a penalty for track limits inflicted to Gilardoni, who had crossed the line in third. Last thrill was for Zeimian, who did a spectacular spin in the final lap. Konrad took the win in Am ahead of Stanley and S.Jedlinski.

Find the results here