Mario Dablander wins SMT title as Petr Fulín wins final race
Petr Fulín took a double victory at Brno in the final race of the 2013 ETCC season, driving from eighth on the grid and into the lead within two laps, whilst Austrian driver Mario Dablander won the race in the Single-Make Trophy class and in doing so wins the class title.
Dablander started from pole position in his Target Competition SEAT León Supercopa courtesy of the reversed top eight grid, with title rivals Jordi Oriola starting alongside in second position and Aurélien Comte down in fifth.
Dablander’s two rivals had a poor getaway at the rolling start however, with Oriola dropping to sixth and Comte to ninth, with Andreas Pfister’s SEAT moving to second and the two BMWs of Mat’o Homola and Petr Fulín straight up to third and fourth in their rear-wheel drive cars from the fourth row of the grid.
Homola and Fulín had both passed Pfister’s SEAT before the end of the first lap, and then Fulín dived past Homola’s BMW for second on lap two, then passed Dablander for the lead at the start of the third lap into Turn 1.
Dablander would drop two more spots to Homola’s BMW and Dušan Borković’s Chevrolet Cruze, but would be unchallenged for the Single-Make Trophy class win in the race, crossing the line fourth to secure the title, eight points clear of Comte.
Kevin Krammes in the Ravenol Team GENA Ford Fiesta and Gilles Bruckner in the Team Lux Motor Ford Fiesta ST resumed their battle from race one for the S1600 class win, with Bruckner again coming out on top.
Andreas Pfister spent the last half of the race defending against the Zengõ Junior Team SEAT of Ferenc Ficza for fifth, with Ficza finally getting the better of the German on the final lap.
Similarly, Jordi Oriola in the Tuenti Racing SEAT was holding off Aurélien Comte’s SEAT for seventh just behind them, but coming across lapped traffic, namely the battling pair of Ukrainians Anton Zaitsev and Ksenya Niks on the penultimate lap, saw Comte able to get ahead of the young Spaniard, who then dropped further down the order following contact with Anton Ladygin’s SMP Russian Bears SEAT.
On the final lap, Igor Skuz and Andrina Gugger also retired from the race, when Skuz’s Campos SEAT hit the side of Gugger’s Honda Civic. Both cars were classified one lap down, unable to make the finish, with Gugger’s car damaged and stopped on the circuit and Skuz’s SEAT stuck in the gravel.
Fulín’s win is his fifth from ten races in the S2000 class this season, having already sealed the S2000 title in race one, with Dablander winning the SMT title with three class victories, more than any of his rivals.
