VeloxV10, campeon de Europa B

"After a thrilling 45min final Patrick Nähr wins the first international title for Team Shepherd with the Velox V10 "eleven". The "B" Euros took place last week at the fast and smooth Rucphen track in the Netherlands. Practise in heats started on Monday and was followed by two timed practise in qualifying heats on Thursday morning.

Already during practise Nähr showed a good performance and set the fastest laptime of all 81 competitors. But also his English teammate Adam Catchpole was very quick setting the 3rd fastest laptime with his Velox V10 "eleven". Close to the top10 was Irish Shepherd driver Chris Steele ranked on the 13th place after the practise session.

On Thursday morning two timed practise heats in qualifying heats were run. Again Nähr and Catchpole were super fast setting the fastest and the third fastest time. In the afternoon the first two rounds of qualifying were held. Like all the week the last run of the day was the fastest so it was very important to set a good time. Nähr managed to set a good time which was only beaten by local driver and Dutch National Champion Pedro Rombouts by less than one second. Catchpole followed on third place about 4 seconds behind the top duo. On Friday morning there were only little changes in the order. Chris Steele was able to improve his time and moved into the top10. With this result Team Shepherd had 3 out of 6 cars in the top10 with two cars ranked even in the top3.

As there are no more direct qualifiers according to the new EFRA rules, everybody had to run at least a semi final to move up to the final. Nähr had no problems to win his semi final and claimed the pole-position for the 45min final as he was a little bit faster than is biggest rival Rombouts and the second semi. Unfortunately Catchpole had some engine problems and wasn't able to claim a bump-up spot. Also Steele didn't make it to the final as he had a flameout in the middle of the semi when running on 5th position after recovering from the last place.

The 45 minute final saw a good and clean start with Nähr defending his first position in the first lap. From the beginning it was clear that it will be a race long battle between Nähr and Rombouts. In the first 30 minutes Nähr could increase his lead to a few seconds because of a different pit strategy but in lap 126 he made a small mistake when entering the pitlane. In the hectic his mechanic Patrick Schäfer received a stop and go penalty for bad refueling and Nähr dropped back to second place. His pace was still fast and he found himself directly behind Rombouts but the Dutch driver had to do at least one pitstop more in the last 15 minutes. The race went on and Nähr was able to take over the lead again by pushing his Velox V10 to the limit. But just before the ultimate pitstop his engine stalled in front of the finishing line because of the increased fuel consumption during the last turn. He rolled over the line and was brought back to the pits by a super fast running marshall. The engine was immediatelly fired up again and Nähr rejoined the race in second position about 4-5 secounds behind the leading Rombouts. In the last minute Rombouts had to do another pitstop and came out of the pitlane right behind Nähr. The young Shepherd driver had nerves of steel and defend his first postion until the checkered flag 4 laps later."

Best regards

Patrick Schäfer