Photo: ETCC Media

Petr Fulín extends championship lead with Race 1 win in Portugal

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Petr Fulín has taken his third win of the 2017 European Touring Car Cup season in the first race at Vila Real, and extended his lead, taken after qualifying yesterday, with chief rival Christjohannes Schreiber failing to score.

Fulín got the jump on pole-sitter Norbert Nagy at the start, and the Krenek SEAT driver led the way into the first corner.

José Rodrigues made an attempt to pass both Nagy and Fulín around the outside, but the move cost him, dropping to fourth as he was out of position for the next turn, with Igor Stefanovski up to third.

Former championship leader Christjohannes Schreiber pitted at the end of lap two with damage, rejoining later in the race to evaluate the Rikli Motorsport team’s repairs.

Local driver Fábio Mota was on a charge from the back of the grid, and passed Peter Rikli’s Honda on lap three. One lap later, Rikli was then pushed out of seventh by the Kraf Racing Audi RS 3 LMS of Plamen Kralev at Turn 6, which earned the Bulgarian a drive-through penalty, but in a race with plenty of retirements, he still wound up fifth in the final classification.

Andreas Pfister soon retired from the race as well, which promoted Mota to fifth, but the Portuguese driver’s charge was slowed when he hit the barrier at Turn 29 and sustained damage to his LEIN Racing SEAT, falling behind Kralev during the later stages of the race.

The two key battles were for the lead and for third, with Fulín and Nagy pulling away from the chasing pair of Stefanovski and Rodrigues.

While Nagy was patiently waiting for a mistake from Fulín, Rodrigues was pressuring as hard as he could, with both drivers cutting the Turn 19 chicane on lap eight.

On lap 11, Rodrigues completely cut the chicane, which although he didn’t pass Stefanovski straight away, gave him a speed advantage up to the next right-hander, where the two made contact, with Stefanovski spun and knocked down to fourth. The incident will be investigated post-race.

Fulín went on to win ahead of Nagy, with Rodrigues third in the provisional classification.

Stefanovski was fourth, with Kralev fifth in the Audi, with Fábio Mota, Mladen Lalusic and Zsolt Szabo completing the top eight, which are reversed for Race 2 with Szabo starting from pole position.