Orlowski moves into contention with A2 win
Michal Orlowski has put himself right back in contention to extend his championship lead of the Euro Offroad Series after the Schumacher driver won A2 of 2WD at the Hudy Racing Arena in Slovakia. With the Pole void of any good luck in A1, losing 8-seconds due to poor marshalling, in A2 the teenager would call in his lucky stars twice as he took the win over Top Qualifier & A1 winner Lee Martin. A bobble from Martin early in the first lap would bunch up the field with Orlowski finding a way passed both Martin and Bruno Coelho to go to the front where he would stay to the end but the EOS Poland winner almost threw it away on the last lap. Jumping the left side double double badly his Cougar KC went tumbling but somehow landed on its wheels allowing him to continue to finish ahead of Martin and Martin Bayer to set the stage for three way A3 shoot out that will decide the overall winner. For Coelho, while he would get by Martin’s Yokomo for a time, a mistake at the end of the straight that sent his Xray flying off the track would start a series of errors that would leave him to finish 4th but along with Martin and Orlowski he still has a chance at notching up his first outright EOS 2WD win in A3.
‘I was really lucky at the start. I actually went wide at the first jump and don’t know what happened after that but I came out in the lead’ was Orlowski’s recollection of the how he got the race lead. A former winner at the Hudy Arena and setting the fastest lap of the race he continued, ‘I knew I was faster than Lee so I tried to make a slight gap on him. Lee & Bruno came together which helped but I still wanted to have space for if I made a mistake which happened on the last lap’. Lining up behind his two rivals for the overall win, on A3 he said, ‘we’ll see what happens’ but with Martin’s TQ reducing his lead to 3-points he said this is going to be an important race for the championship.
‘It’s all down to leg three’, was Martin’s reaction after A2. In search of his first EOS win of the season, giving his view of the start he said, ‘I jumped a tiny bit too long and for the first time this weekend the car double bounced on landing and got up on 2-wheels. I managed to save it but there where cars down inside’. He continued, ‘Michal got a bit of a lead out of it but I caught him up but then had a few bobbles and hit wheels with Bruno and we both hesitated. Once things settled back down Michal was too far gone to catch without a big mistake, which almost happened’.
Coelho said, ‘I had a terrible start. Lee made a mistake and I was waiting to see where his car was going to go but then everyone overtook me but luckily nobody crashed me’. Coming out third, he said, ‘I was able to catch Lee and overtook him but then at the end of the straight I had a mistake and went off the track. I tried to recover but ended up making more mistakes. We have one more go’. In order for Coelho to notch up a first EOS 2WD victory he needs to win in a faster time than that which Martin achieved in A1.
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