Photo: ETCC Media

Nikolay Karamyshev to carry the most weight at Slovakia

By

The FIA European Touring Car Cup has published the success ballast which will be applied at the next round of the series at the Slovakiaring on May 11th, with Campos Racing’s Nikolay Karamyshev carrying the most ballast in his Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T.

The ETCC uses driver-based success ballast (similar to the British Touring Car Championship, though slightly different in its implementation), while the WTCC uses compensation weight applied to each model of car instead.

Having scored the most points in the TC2T class (reserved for Super 2000 cars with a 1.6 litre turbocharged engine), Karamyshev gets an award of 20kg ballast plus an additional kg per point, adding 41kg to his Chevrolet Cruze, which will therefore run at 1,211kg at the Slovakiaring circuit.

Karamyshev’s Ukrainian team-mate Igor Skuz is the next most penalised, carrying 27kg, while Proteam’s Mikhail Grachev carries 25kg. The Russian, whose races in Paul Ricard only lasted one lap, is only entered on a race-by-race basis and so is forced to carry an additional 15kg penalty.

In the TC2 class, last year’s S2000 drivers’ champion will carry 42kg of ballast on his BMW 320si, with Honda driver Peter Rikli on 29kg and Sladecka Motorsport’s Alfa Romeo on 23kg, with nine other drivers also carrying weight penalties all the way down to just 1kg for Serbian driver Milovan Vesnic.

Ukrike Krafft, who took pole and won both races in the S1600 class at Paul Ricard, carries 21kg (with the ballast additions much less for the smaller S1600 class cars), with team-mate Christian Kranenberg on 16.5kg, and Patrick Wolf on 11kg.

Finnish driver Aku Pellinen, who shone on his debut with the SEAT León Supercopa, will carry the largest weight penalty in the Single-Make Trophy (SMT) class of 41kg, with Swiss driver Ronny Jost on 29kg and SMP Russian Bears Racing’s Mikhail Maleev on 22kg.

2014 ETCC Slovakia Success Ballast

TC2T Class
Nikolay Karamyshev – +41kg
Igor Skuz – +27kg
Mikhail Grachev – +25kg
Aytac Biter – +22kg
Franz Engstler – +6kg

TC2 Class
Petr Fulín – +42kg
Peter Rikli – +29kg
Samuel Sladecka – +23kg
Norbert Nagy – +14kg
Michael Matejovsky – +12kg
Andrina Gugger – +11kg
Plamen Kralev – +6kg
Christian Fischer – +3kg
Norbert Kiss – +3kg
Milovan Vesnic – +1kg

S1600 Class
Ulrike Krafft – +21kg
Christian Kranenberg – +16.5kg
Patrick Wolf – +11kg
Ksenya Niks – +4kg
Erwin Lukas – +4kg

SMT Class
Aku Pellinen – +41kg
Ronny Jost – +29kg
Mikhail Maleev – +22kg
Sergey Ryabov – +16kg
Vladimir Nikolaev – +10kg
Dmitry Bragin – +8kg
Andreas Pfister – +2kg