The fact that the radical intervention in the setup, which the team had announced before the weekend, had paid off was already shown in Saturday’s qualifying, which Jan Krabec dominated in his class, and was third overall. He also had a great start to the race and fought his way to first place in the absolute standings. After a few laps, however, an unfortunate puncture occurred in the left rear wheel. “During the track walk, we saw that the track was broken in places, that there were sharp edges of the curb and metal drains. There had already been a lot of punctures in training. From my point of view, it’s a bit of bad luck, because I tried to drive conservatively, not to go beyond the track limits and not to take too many risks. But it happened anyway, that’s just part of motorsport,” says Jan Krabec, looking back at the cause of the unfortunate puncture.
The team considered that Krabec would drive to the pits with the flat tire for a change, but in the end he decided not to risk damaging the car and withdrew from the first race. “After the flat tire, I stopped at the track and Tomáš Fanta and I discussed whether I should try to drive to the pits, change the tire and still fight for points. In the end, however, we assessed that we would probably damage the car so much that we would not be able to continue,” explains Krabec.
RTR projects also managed Sunday’s qualifying brilliantly. They finished first in their category, but were eventually relegated to second place by the protest of Sehdi Sarmini from the KTM True Racing factory team, who protested against the annulment of his fastest lap. “Sarmini’s lap was annulled due to exceeding track limits, but after the protest they recognised it. If we had known that it would be like that, we would probably have stayed on the track for a while longer and tried to set a better time,” says Jan Krabec in retrospect. Tomáš Fanta also sees the controversial moment of the second qualifying in a similar way. “In general, it is worth highlighting that we managed all the results very efficiently, we were only on the track for the necessary time. If we had known that we still had to fight for the second qualifying, we would have tried.”
If in qualifying Krabec had to bow his head to Sarmini, who drives in a crew with Austrian Klaus Angehofer – a direct competitor in the fight for the title – in the race the Brno team did not give his rivals a chance. In the first half, Jan Krabec, driving a KTM X-BOW GT2, had a thrilling duel with Sarmini in the same car and Leonardo Gorini in a Porsche 992 GT2, but after the changeover he managed to gain valuable seconds on both competitors and keep them until the finish.
“In the first half, none of us managed to gain a key lead, we were still two to three car lengths apart. But then Sarmini got a spin and thanks to that I managed to break away from Gorini. Together with a well-executed pit stop, that was key. In the second half, I tried to drive with my head, not be aggressive and bring the car to the finish in first place. But I still raced until the very end and overtook a few cars from the PRO-AM category,” describes the race Jan Krabec, who coped brilliantly with the extreme physical strain due to the hot weather.
After Saturday’s unfinished race, Jan Krabec lost the championship lead, but on Sunday he returned to the lead thanks to the victory, albeit with a smaller points lead. “We wanted to leave Portugal with a larger points margin, which didn’t work out due to Saturday’s puncture. The series is now balanced and three drivers will be competing for the title. Let’s hope that we have chosen all the bad luck and in the last two races we will be able to fully use the setup that we fine-tuned in Portimao to fight for the championship victory,” concludes Tomáš Fanta.
