Rheinard won ETS round in Germany to end five-year carpet skid

Marc Rheinard took a significant victory at Round 2 of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series in Germany today, the win marking the Tamiya driver’s first ETS win on carpet in 5-years. The last indoor win for the championship’s most winning driver came in Warsaw, Poland, in 2010, the year the 4-time World Champion claimed his one and only ETS title.  Having taken an unchallenged A1 win last night at the Muelheim-Kaerlich event, Rheinard secured his 13th ETS victory by cruising to another easy win over reigning champion Ronald Volker in A2. ‘A good weekend’ was Rheinard’s reaction, him adding ‘I can’t remember the last time I won an ETS race on carpet’.  ‘After the disappointment of Hrotovice I needed to try to come back into contention for the overall championship and this is a good start’. Top Qualifier for the record breaking entry race, as he was at the season opener in the Czech Republic but where he ended up only finishing 4th, the German said the weekend shows Tamiya have made progress with the TRF419 and they are now going in the right direction for the future.  Although supported by TRF engineer and competent racer Takayuki Kono who qualified in the B-Main, Rheinard said the win was also important following the departure of longtime team-mate Viktor Wilck with him joking ‘the next race it will be a Tamiya 1-2 with Naoto (Matsukura)’. Making a shock switch from Yokomo to Tamiya last month, World Champion Matsukura is expected to attend Round 3 of the ETS when the championship makes its long awaited return to Italy.

 

In the Xray Pro Stock class, A2 also saw the overall win decided as Mareck Cerny repeated another unchallenged tone to tone win.  The first win of the season for the back to back defending champion, Cerny would win A2 from Awesomatix’ Max Mächler and Czech Republic winner Lars Hoppe.  For Cerny’s team-mates Mike Gosvig and Jan Ratheisky, who started directly behind him on the grid, it was not a good race as Gosvig made a mistake half way in while holding second and Ratheisky got into the side of A1 third place finisher Helge Johannessen.

 

In Formula, Ratheisky had no such issues as he did a 2013 season Sebastian Vettel and left the rest of the field in his track to secure the overall win, the second of the season for the ETS Champion.