Sharp is the ETC Cup Champion

Ryan Sharp secured the European Touring Car Cup title today at Estoril, Portugal. Sharp won the two races in a dominating fashion ahead of his team mate Emmet O’Brien. Both races were very wet, with the first race being delayed by the torrential rain.

Race One

Alessandro Zanardi took the start of the first race ahead of his team mate Félix Porteiro who nipped past Ryan Sharp. But it was not long until Sharp roared past Porteiro with his SEAT Léon that worked extremely well in the wet conditions.

The BMW Italy-Spain cars on the other hand seemed not to benefit from the wet conditions – both Zanardi and Porteiro quickly got their mirrors full of the GR Asia SEAT’s of Sharp and O’Brien.

A couple of laps in to the race Sharp had past Zanardi for the lead and quickly build up a lead. His team mate O’Brien shortly followed his path and took second place. Zanardi continued to drop down the order, his team mate Porteiro was able to hold a higher pace and secured third position ahead of his team mate.

On the last couple of laps Zanardi was closely followed by Robin Rudholm in the West Coast Racing BMW 320i. As the finish flag fell only 0.090 seconds separated the both to Zanardi’s advantage.

Winner of the Super Production category was Alexander Lvov ahead of Timur Sandredinov and Raimo Kulli.

With the reverse grid order rule Rosenblad got pole position for the second race with his three fellow Swedes behind him.