Petr Fulín becomes the 2017 FIA ETCC champion!

10.10.2017 07:23

Home driver Petr Fulín celebrates a title at the inaugural FIA European Touring Car Cup (ETCC) race at the Most motor-racing circuit. Amazingly, the weekend drama did not culminate until the second of the two Sunday season-closers. This year, that is, as many as three drivers were still remaining in the game for the overall victory after the first race. Besides Fulín, even Hungarian Norbert Nagy and Christjohannes Schreiber of Switzerland had their chances. Before the final race, the gap between these three title contenders was just three and six points respectively. Interestingly, Fulín’s triumph is his third title in this cup. Curiously, the icing on the cake in the second race was a superb fourth-place finish scored by the champion’s son, Petr Fulín Jr., who was among three Czech ETCC debutants in Most.

The first Sunday race was won on road by Plamen Kralev of Bulgaria with Audi RS3 LMS, in front of Nagy and Fulín, both in SEAT. But Kralev was penalised by stewards for contact with Schreiber and fell down to fourth. Therefore Nagy was the official winner with Fulín second and Schreiber third. In second Sunday race, Petr Fulín scored a convincing victory. He didn’t give his rivals a chance. Although he started from sixth spot on the gird, he succeeded in moving up as far as the top place in the nail-biting end-of-season decider. Kralev came home second while the second runner-up spot went to Nagy.

Both races brought dramatic moments. The first of them excluded Macedonian Igor Stefanovski in a Seat from the title hunt as he got a drive-through penalty after colliding with Fulín. The second crucial moment involved Schreiber who lost all hopes when crashing his Honda Civic.“I must express my thanks to our team and mechanics for doing a great job. It is also all the fans here that deserve my thanks for supporting me and creating a brilliant atmosphere. Autodrom Most has proved that it is capable of organising prestigious motor sporting events such as the FIA ETCC. Judging by the positive response, the drivers and teams have enjoyed the weekend and appreciated the prepared programme. I believe that all of us will meet in Most again next year,” said the new champion at the post-event press conference.

Fulín picked up 82 points from twelve races over his victory haul in the cup series this season. The runner-up spot goes to Nagy with 75 points. The Hungarian managed to move ahead of Schreiber in the final standings in Most. So Schreiber had to make do with the third spot eventually collecting 65 points. Stefanovski finished fourth overall by five points.

Parts of the Most Grand Finale weekend were some more races such as the Twingo Cup and Haigo ADAC series involving open-wheelers and touring cars once taking part in the former Peace and Friendship of Socialist Countries Cup. The spectators were delighted to watch specially built works cars and individually constructed vehicles contesting in an FAS AČR regularity rally. It is not the finishing order but clocking two times as identical as possible on two measured laps that decides the winner.

The thrilling moments on the track were made even more varied by an interesting programme of side events. For example, Petr Kopfstein, a participant in the prestigious Red Bull Air Race series in the Master Class category, presented an aerobatic show. And the lunchtime break was filled with a concert given by the music group Rock Slaves on the start-finish straight.

 


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