Marcel Maasmann (Anderson/FPE) delighted the 60,000 Dutch crowd at Assen with two excellent ‘Home’ victories which put him six points clear in the Championship standings with just two more races remaining.
Marcel Maasmann, Superkart
His closest Championship rival Lee Harpham (Anderson/FPE) had to be satisfied with a 2nd and a 3rd place as did Denmark’s Henrik Lilja (PVP/PVP) who is 3rd in the standings but over 40 points behind Maasmann.
The weekend did not start well for Maasmann. He was only 7th quickest in qualifying practice. ‘I trapped the fuel lead with my knee and lost power – a silly thing to do’ he explained. So he started both races on the 4th row. He made swift progress in Race 1 and took the lead on lap 6 and beat pole-sitter Lilja into 2nd place with team mate Harpham in 3rd.
But Race 2 was a bigger challenge. It was the best race of the season so far and Maasmann became involved in a titanic battle with Lilja and Romano de Ruit (Anderson/FPE). In the meantime Harpham and former Champion Gavin Bennett (Anderson/DEA) pulled away.
But the safety car was deployed just before the half race distance to permit some debris to be removed from the track following a collision between Drivers towards the back of the grid. Neither Driver was hurt but the safety car was not welcomed by race leader Harpham. The restart came with just 3 laps remaining and whilst Harpham was quickly back up to racing pace, Maasmann was immediately closing on him and took the lead on lap 10 of 11.
Read below the complete document
Info & Photo CIK