Christian Costoya of Parolin Motorsport won the first round of the Champions of the Future Euro Series in OK after a hard fought weekend. Drivers had to contend with the warmest temperatures of the year and a different tyre compound to those that they have raced on so far but they were well supported by the entire Parolin team.

Costoya shows his mettle
The Spanish driver set an outright lap record in Qualifying as the only driver to lap below a minute with 59.897s. As poleman he won all but one heat then took the Super Heat victory after leading from lights to flag. In the Final Christian retook the lead on lap 4 and judiciously balanced wear to the Maxxis tyres and speed to win by over two seconds. He is now leading in the series standings by 24 points.

Also in OK, Efim Derunov made great progress with a top six result in the heats.

Promising Junior drivers
Of the rookie OK-Junior drivers, Bruno Blanco on his first race outside of Italy took 8th in Qualifying and impressed with three 2nd places in the heats to start 3rd on the grid for Prefinal A. He finished 5th in the Prefinal, 10th in the Final and is now 8th overall in the points.

Also in Junior, Gioele Girardello qualified 5th and took 2nd in his final heat but after 6th in his Super Heat was unlucky not to finish the Final.

Giacomo Giusto had a lot to contend with in his heats but qualified for the Final and made up 15 places, while Alessandro Truchot was fast after an unlucky Qualifying and despite many places gained in the heats didn’t qualify for the Final. Priam Bruno was recovering from injury and the team is confident he will be on form next weekend.

Marco Parolin said:

“This weekend was very positive, we were starting on the new tyres and at the beginning we had to make some adaptations compared to the Vega in Junior and the LeCont in OK that we used in WSK. So far it has been a great start, in Junior we had two drivers in the top ten in Qualifying and considering their experience I’m happy that they were able to stay in the top ten until the very last part of the race so a positive balance for the Juniors. In OK I am very happy for Christian, who is constantly demonstrating that he is one of the top drivers of the series. He did a flawless job all weekend and won all the heats except one where he wasn’t on the new tyres. In the Final we knew that at the beginning our competitors were trying to put us under pressure but with a cooler mindset he made his way to the top. A super weekend by Christian. All the team did a super job from testing until today and hopefully we can continue along the same lines next week.”

The team will spend the week analysing the data from this weekend before the FIA Karting European Championship starts next weekend also at Campillos, with Qualifying on Friday.