Moderator's Report
Summary
Another dominant win by Axel only headed briefly by Doni who eventually dropped back to finish fourth. Andreas secured second place and Dean was promoted up to third on the podium after Tristan was awarded a penalty.
Server replay time: 0h02m37s
Lap 1 – Masta - Francesco Molteni and Tristan Bot
Franceso gets a good exit out of Malmedy and thanks to a helpful dose of slipstreaming easily overtakes Tristan on the long run down to Masta. Francesco makes a clean entry into the left kink at Masta and manages to avoid Evil’s Honda that has understeered wide, bounced off the Armco barrier and slid back across the track. Undaunted, Francesco negotiates the right-hand bend at Masta and keeps everything on the tarmac.
Tristan’s Mclaren didn’t have the straight-line speed of Francesco’s Ferrari but it handles well in the corners and he is much faster on the exit of Masta. So much so that he rear-ends Francesco. Francesco is out of the race but Tristan continues apparently unscathed.
Francesco did nothing wrong. However having crashed out, his car rolled back towards the track almost taking out Andy Livingston and Billy Nobrakes. It does look like Francesco tried to avoid rolling back onto the track and even appears to accelerate back up the banking but it was only thanks to Billy’s quick reactions that a second incident was avoided.
Tristan was undoubtedly quicker on the exit of Masta and needed to try very hard to make up for his underpowered Mclaren but that does not mean he is allowed to take unnecessary risks. It is the following driver’s responsibility to make a clean pass. Tristan didn’t intentionally try to barge a slower driver out of the way but he should have been more patient and planned a safe move once he had worked out where he was quicker than Francesco. He could have made an opportunistic pass if Francesco had made a mistake but clearly this was not the case on this occasion. Being slightly slower or scrubbing off more speed than optimum is not making a mistake.