Orlowski wins A1 with flawless drive

A flawless drive from Schumacher’s Michal Orlowski netted the 13-year-old a convincing win in the opening A-Main at the Euro Offroad Series finale. Leading away the world class field, the Top Qualifier would get his break when champion Lee Martin made a mistake on lap 6 of 13 allowing him to take his first A-final win by over 6-seconds. Dropping to third behind Ryan Cavalieri, Martin would get back his starting position when the multiple World Champion would make a mistake on the penultimate lap leaving him to complete the Top 3. Having started third Marc Rheinard would finish 4th ahead of last year’s event winner Martin Bayer.

Chased initially by Martin’s Yokomo, Orlowski described his first TQ start as ‘stressful’.  Coming under ‘a lot of pressure from Lee’ he said after the British ace made a mistake he felt like he slowed down but looking at the lap times afterward he laughed that 2 laps later he set the fastest lap of the race.  Describing A1 as the ‘perfect race’ he said ‘hopefully I can repeat it in A2 and get another win’.

While Orlowski drove a flawless 5-minutes, the same couldn’t be said for his rivals.  Martin said his YZ-2 again suffered a bad landing and hitting the barriers and in terms of his chances of going for the win ‘that was it, gone’.

Describing Bayer’s start as ‘aggressive’, Cavalieri said he retook the Xray when the Czech driver made a mistake working his way up to second as others did the same.  Catching Orlowski ‘slightly’ he said their speed was very similar so the gap never got any smaller.  In the final minute the American said ‘all of a sudden the car started to feel a little weird’ leading to him crashing and dropping back behind Martin.

Battling with Martin for third, Carson Wernimont said his race was going pretty well but on the penultimate lap his B5M’s electrics shutdown at the end of the straight. Asked what caused the problem he was still trying to figure out what went wrong.

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