ETS heads outdoors as Apeldoorn hosts Round 5
The Yokomo Euro Touring Series gets back underway this weekend following a three month break with the beautiful Apeldoorn track in the Netherlands hosting the fifth round and first outdoor race of the 2010/11 season. Making a return to the ETS having previously held the Dutch round during the 2008/09 series, over 200 drivers will compete at Apeldoorn including two time champion Jilles Groskamp who took victory on the last visit to the track en route to successfully defending the inaugural ETS title.
His first appearance in this season’s ETS, the Dutch driver who is now based in Thailand, will join up with his Tamiya Racing Factory team-mates Marc Rheinard and Viktor Wilck as they seek their first win of 2010/11. Having won the Modified title every year since the creation of the series, Tamiya have had a lean season so far with defending champion Rheinard having struggled to match the pace of champion elect Ronald Volker.
Having seen their 100% winning run come to an end at the fourth round in Poland, Volker and his Yokomo team will be out to reaffirm themselves as the dominant force of the 2010/11 series. The man responsible for that first defeat was Team Associated’s Juho Levanen. 18 races after winning the first ever ETS race back in 2007, the Finnish ace took the TC6 to its first major European victory and will be looking to pick up where he left off and add to the car’s achievements this weekend.
One driver who will be looking to upset the regular front runners in the Xenon Modified class is Christopher Krapp. The factory Kyosho driver showed two weeks ago that his TF-6 is competitive on asphalt when he won the Warm-up race for the European Championships in Austria ahead of Yokomo team driver Yannic Prümper and Xray ace Alexander Hagberg.
In the Xray Pro-Stock class, standings leader Martin Hofer will be looking to make it three in a row for British manufacturer Schumacher but defending champion Alexander Stocker is back and will be looking to end his winning drought. Also set to be serious contenders for victory are Polish Top Qualifier Ivan Laptev with the Russian designed Awesomatix, last year’s Dutch round winner, when the race was held at Heemstede, Oliver Franke and local star Rob Janssen who put his extensive track knowledge to good use two years ago when he completely dominated the event.
Round 5, the penultimate round of the Yokomo Euro Touring Series, gets underway with practice on Friday and culminates with triple mains for all drivers on Sunday. All the action from Apeldoorn can be followed live throughout the weekend on RedRC.
