Renault Sport Trophy: Weekend full of excitements at Red Bull Ring

The third round of the 2016 Renault Sport Trophy took place at Red Bull Ring in Spielberg. After two-month break, the mighty Renault RS01 machines returned to the track at the famous Austrian Grand Prix circuit. Markus Palttala and Fabian Schiller of the #9 Team Marc VDS EG 0,0 took the victory in the Saturday’s Endurance race. The winners of the two Sunday’s Sprint races were Fran Rueda (Team Marc VDS) in the AM class and Pieter Schothorst (Equipe Verschuur) in the PRO category.

Markus Palttala and Fabian Schiller won the Endurance race

For the Finnish-German duo Palttala – Schiller it was the second Endurance victory in three races. Although the poleman Pieter Schothorst dominated in the first part of the race, reserved for the PRO drivers, the #21 car of the Equipe Verschuur finished 8th at the end, because the second driver, Jeroen Schothorst wasn’t so fast.

Palttala and Schiller proved one more time that they are the best combination of the Pro and Am driver, so they took the win ahead of Roy Geerts and Miguel Ramos in the #19 Equipe Verschuur’s car. Tanart Sathienthirakul and Fran Rueda in the #15 car of the Team Marc VDS EG 0,0 finished third. The victory at Red Bull Ring has put the German-Finnish duo back in first place in the overall endurance classification.

Renault Sport Trophy at Red Bull Ring – Endurance race podium

In the first sprint race on Sunday, Fran Rueda and Fabian Schiller were again on the podium. The 19-year-old Spanish driver finally scored his first victory, after finishing second in Aragon and third in Imola. The third man on the Am class podium was Andres Mendez (Oregon Team).

In the Pro class sprint race Pieter Schothorst started from pole but lost the lead from Palttala at the start of the race. Big crash in the opening lap caused the Safety Car intervention, with five cars retiring from the race. At the restart, Pieter Schothorst retook the lead and stayed in front until the end of the race. Palttala finished 2.091sec behind the winner while Bruno Bonifacio (Oregon Team) completed the Pro class podium.