Tohill escapes Hell with solid points haul

19093025_1237865096318028_4947388975771729251_o

Double FIA European Rallycross Champion Derek Tohill finished tenth in the second round of the Euro RX Supercar Championship at Hell in Norway to further strengthen his position in the Championship standings (June 11).

The Dublin-based Irishman entered the event on the back of his best ever international Supercar finish at the opening round of the Championship in Barcelona, but knew the 32-car field would provide tough opposition in Hell, a circuit that hasn’t previously suited the PFCRX team.

Consistently mixing it with the fastest car and driver combinations in the Championship throughout the event, Tohill set a best time of sixth in Q2, when the track was at its trickiest stage in a transitional period between wet and drying surfaces.

Despite feeling the optimum setup wasn’t utilised for the drying conditions of Q3 on Sunday morning, the result after Q4 was tenth overall and a place in the semi-finals, in part due to further lessons learnt on which direction to take the 600 horsepower Ford Fiesta Supercar at a recent test in Latvia.

Having made it into the semi-finals but knowing he needed a top-three finish to qualify for the final, Tohill attempted an early overtake on another car but the door was closed and the Fiesta Supercar hit a kerb, puncturing the front-left tyre and putting the Irishman out of the race.

Regardless, the squad were classified tenth overall and equal seventh in the championship standings.

The team remains in Scandinavia for its next event, round three of the FIA European Rallycross Championship at Holjes in Sweden (June 30 – July 2).

Derek Tohill | Driver | Ford Fiesta #111

“To get a top 10 finish at what I’d call our bogey track is great. It was always going to be damage limitation here, there are a lot of Norwegian drivers in Euro RX that are on home turf, and this is always a tough event for me. That’s great, because next up is Sweden, France and Latvia and we love all three. We’ve gained in the Championship too, so there are lots of positives to take from the weekend.

If we found a couple of tenths per lap, I think we’d be consistently in the top six, so we just need to find a couple of tenths and its game on. With such a big and strong entry, the first objective is to make the semi-finals, and in 10th we did that. We tried a brave move in the semi-final to make a few positions and try to get to the final, but it didn’t work – that’s rallycross.

The lads have worked really hard before the event and all weekend, they’ve done an amazing job. We’re all still learning, it’s only our second year running the Supercar with our own team so there’s a lot more to come. We need to work on making some better starts, which kind of let us down today, and put us on the back foot when normally that is a strong point of ours, so we’ll work on that over the next couple of weeks and look forward to Sweden, which for us is the holy grail of rallycross.

Hell, Norway, Final Result:

1 Robin Larsson (SWE)
2 Anton Marklund (SWE)
3 Alexander Hvaal (NOR)
4 Peter Hedstrom (SWE)
5 Tamas Pal Kiss (HUN)
6 Tommy Rustad (NOR)

10 Derek Tohill (IRL)

FIA European Rallycross Championship Points:

1 Anton Marklund (SWE) 56
2 Robin Larsson (SWE) 44
3 Tamas Pal Kiss (HUN) 40
4 Tommy Rustad (NOR) 37
5 Thomas Bryntesson (NOR) 33
6 Alexander Hvaal (NOR) 30
7 Ollie O’Donovan (IRL) 22
= Derek Tohill (IRL) 22

Leave a Reply