First of all I’d like to start by congratulating Davide Ongaro and his team for yet another incredible performance. Very impressive, hats off to all of you guys👏🏻

After a busy and exhausting week trying our best to be there when it mattered, Saturday came with a curveball for myself. Switching tire compounds was anticipated as we knew the evolution of the track would go in that direction from past experience here. However I personally didn’t anticipate the amount of grip to be as high causing me to loose the nice balance I had during qualifying.

I felt strong all week, showed my speed in practice and even though I didn’t get to TQ a qualifier I was always very close to the top and very pleased with lining up 2nd on the grid for the semi. 
When Saturday came, we kept an eye on what other guys in the team was using for tires. It became clear we needed to go for clay compounds as the normal compound wasn’t as fast when the tire became slick.

I had a difficult Semi practice, made a few changes for the Semi and even though I had a good opening few laps I quickly felt I had to drive very different and careful, I was just trying to survive really. I did my best and finished 4th, after we were done I got a nice surprise seeing only Canas was ahead my time from the other semi and therefore I would be lining up 5th for my 5th A-main appearence in the 1/8 class.

We quickly got to work after the semi as I needed to make some changes for the main in order to have a chance. After a quick debrief with Max and Martin (over the phone) I was very confident with the changes I was going to do.

Got everything ready and had another solid start, following Davide, Elliott and Canas for the first 10-15 minutes. At this point I felt like great and knew I would be in the fight for the podium. We pulled a small gap from the rest of the field, unfortunately right at this point I had a tough 3-4 minutes after second refueling where I made 3-4 mistakes from nowhere. This put me way back from the top 3 guys and I’m very dissapointed of myself that I let this happen as the tires were fading and loosing the feeling I had in the beginning of the final.

It was a frustrating couple of minutes but tried my best to put my head back down and finish off strong the last 30min or so. I was able to come back to 4th in the end and close to step up on the podium after some issues for Elliott and Canas towards the end.

All in all it was another solid result of course, but it’s not what I came here for. It’s tough when you are very close all week and then for the balance to be off when it matters the most. It just shows that you never stop learning in racing. You always have the ups and downs but I’m still relatively pleased finishing 3rd at the Euros and 4th at the Worlds in my first year with Xray and especially learning to drive and tune the pivot ball platform. The three guys ahead of me have lots of experience with their cars and I will have to continue to work hard to catch up for future races!

A special thanks to dad and Max for the awesome pitstops all week. You two were amongst the fastest teams in the pit which is so important not to give away valuable tenths to the tough competition.

Congratulations to Elliott Boots for his 2nd place as well, great year buddy! And to Juan Carlos for 3rd after being strong from start to finish! 👏🏻

Huuuge thanks to my sponsors for the continued support! A special mention goes out to Nicola and Hotrace for the great support all week long.

On my way home now and tomorrow we start to prepare for the 1/10 European Championship starting next week! Let’s keep on pushing🤘🏼😅

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