No surprises as Matsukura cruises to A1 win

In a rather processional opening 4WD A-Main at the Euro Offroad Series, there was little surprise as Naoto Matsukura cruised to an easy win over defending Champion Joern Neumann.  The Top Qualifier immediately made his mark on the race pulling quickly pulling clear of the rest of the 10-car field of which the Top 3 finished as they started.   The biggest movement of the race came from Martin Bayer.  Starting 4th on the grid, an over jump caused the Xray driver to crash on lap 3 and drop to the back of the field.  The beneficiary of this was Carson Wernimont, who despite giving Martin some attention, finished fourth 4-seconds off the Yokomo driver.

Matsukura summed up his unchallenged race as a ‘safety run’ adding he had ‘no problems’.  Despite being the current 2WD EOS Champion, the Japanese ace has yet to win in 4WD.  His second time to TQ the class, the 21-year-old said he hoped to finally crack the winners circle in A2 with a repeat of performance of the opening final.  Neumann, who has only ever been denied victory in 4WD once before, summed up his racing as ‘boring’. ‘Too slow’ he said there was nothing he could do about the gap to Matsukura and behind he had a comfortable gap over Martin. Happier with his Yokomo compared to qualifying, Martin said he ‘drove around at his own speed’ in what was an uneventful 5-minutes of racing.  Recovering from his earlier error to finish 6th behind team-mate Martin Wollanka, Bayer said he messed up the race himself by over jumping the jump at the loop and he hoped for a better run in the next one.

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