LAMBORGHINI TAKES THE BALTIC TOURING CAR CLASS VICTORY IN RIGA
Baltic Touring Cars series in “Riga Summer Race” event gathered 19 participants and two newbies – Valle Makela who was driving his impressive Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 and Robertas Graudinis with BMW M3. After qualifying, the pole position belonged to V.Makela after setting the best time at 1.21,917 minutes. Second place in qualifying belonged to Ernesta Globytė, but third fastes was Robertas Graudinis. All three participants were competing in Baltic GT class.
During the first race one of the championship leaders Edvinas Mardosas had an accident due to the lost brakes. He hit the wall but managed to prepare his car for the second race. Also the second race was not running smooth. Julius Skirmantas and Paulius Sprindys driving Honda Civic managed to crash their cars not too far away from each other. After 5 laps the race was stopped because of P.Sprindys was not leaving his car after the accident. For safety reasons all cars was called to the Park Ferme and results for the second ride was counted as they were after 5 laps racing.
As marked V.Makela this was his first race after 6 years when he was driving in Hungaro ring in 12 hour endurance race. “I am here to have some fun. I was not pushing the limits in this race, but I think I could manage to do lap time close to 1 minute 17 secs,” after the race said Finnish driver.
After both runs, BGT leaders did not change and the same top three showed on the podium as in a qualifying results. V.Makela took the first place, E.Globyte – second one and BTC series guest Robertas Graudinis took the third place.
Mika Virtanen and his Renault Megane Trophy was leading all the way in a Baltic Open class so he managed to hold that position until the finish. Kaspar Aruvee took the second place in Baltic Open class.
In BTC1 class the first place was taken by Peeter Peek, the second place belonged to Enar-Klaus Kunman and the third was claimed by Latvian driver Reinis Lazdinš.
BTC2 class podium was taken by Lithuanian drivers: Ramūnas Čapkauskas was happy to win the first place with his new BMW. Nerijus Malasevičius took the second place and Alvydas Malakauskas has managed to be the owner of the third place.
The closing event of the Baltic Touring Car Championship is going to happen on the 8th of October in Bikernieki racetrack.
