The chance of points dashed by the car's failure

Awaiting the start of Race 2 of the third racing event of the SEAT Leon Eurocup in his car on the grid on Sunday, Michal Matějovský was thinking hard to figure out how to take full advantage of his tenth place from Race 1, which put him into the fifth row. In the SEAT Leon Eurocup series, Race 2 is always started from the grid, in a manner adopted from the Grand Prix. So, after making a perfect start, Michal moved up to run eighth, and his situation offered good prospects. But than, after several fierce battles and a side impact from one of his rivals, Michal dropped to the fourteenth place. To top it all, just when he was entering the second half of Lap 1, Michal got involved in his first collision with Gabor Weber, of Hungary. Consequently, he lost the ideal track for a moment and slightly lost speed. Afterwards, due to one of the collisions that occurred in the field, the safety car had to be brought out.

When the safety car left the track, the drivers resumed the fierce battle. Michal Matějovský was running fourteenth. Unfortunately, he got involved in another collision, this time with J. P. Cardoso, of Portugal, and dropped almost to the end of the pack. Later in the race, moreover, it became evident that the Sunred-BRT team's car was not in an ideal shape, as its performance was affected by a fault of the electronic system. Despite this handicap, Matějovský kept fighting and continued chasing the drivers ahead of him. In the end, he managed to take the 21st place, having gained the valuable experience of the Estoril circuit.

'After the promising result of the Saturday race, I naturally wanted to move on and take full advantage of the 10th place that I had taken on Saturday. I was aiming at a point-scoring place in Race 2. Unfortunately, the situation in Race 2 developed in a different way. Moreover, a failure of the car's electronic system became evident later on, resulting in the car's lack of power output in some track sections. So, in the course of the upcoming period before the racing event at Brands Hatch we will focus our efforts on improving the car's set-up and, together with the SUNRED-BRT team, we will stage another test series in Spain to fine-tune the car and check its damaged parts,' Matějovský said after the Sunday race in Estoril.

For the complete results of the third event of the SEAT Leon Eurocup series please go to the address http://www.mstworld.com/Results/2008/80006sec.pdf. The series' next round will take place in two weeks' time, from 26 to 27 July 2008, in the UK, at Brands Hatch.