Niels Langeveld secures opening race honours at Zandvoort
Niels Langeveld has moved to the head of the TCR Germany standings after securing a dominant victory in the opening race of the weekend at Zandvoort.
Having started from pole position, Langeveld was able to maintain his advantage at the head of the pack through the opening lap before the field went behind the Safety Car following an incident further down the grid.
Michelle Halder failed to get away off the line at the wheel of her Cupra TCR, with Kai Jordan and Lukas Neidertscheider coming together as they attempted to get past the stricken car.
The resultant contact put both cars out and saw the race go under caution as marshals worked to move them off the circuit.
Racing resumed with 23 minutes of the race still to run, with Langeveld making the perfect restart to immediately break away from Antti Buri behind, quickly establishing a lead of more than two seconds out front.
Buri meanwhile found himself being forced to defend from Harald Proczyk’s Opel Astra TCR at the restart before slowing starting to edge away from the car behind.
With Mike Halder running in a lonely fourth spot, much of the focus in the opening half of the race was between the Hyundai of Luca Engstler and Simon Reicher’s Audi.
Engstler was the man in possession of fifth spot but had Reicher doing his best to try and find away ahead only for the YACO Racing driver to then find himself coming under attack from the second of the Engstler-run Hyundais in the hands of Theo Coicaud.
As the timer wore down however, the gaps between the cars gradually grew with the only drama coming in the closing minutes when Jasmin Preisig went off from 16th place and found herself beached in the gravel.
With her car well off the circuit, officials were able to avoid the need to bring out the safety car for a second time with the race able to run to its conclusion, with Langeveld crossing the line with an advantage just over six seconds over Buri for his second win of the year.
With Proczyk dropping back from Buri and finishing in third, Langeveld and Proczyk now sit level on points in the standings – with Langeveld taking the points lead on count back.
Halder took a lonely fourth spot ahead of Engstler, who was able to secure fifth despite the best efforts of Reicher over the course of the final lap.
The pair would cross the line split by just half a second, with Coicaud just behind taking seventh spot to match his best result of the season so far.
Max Hesse was top rookie in eighth ahead of Luke Wankmüller, with the top ten completed by Niko Kankkunen.
Aside from those caught up in the incident at the start, and Preisig at the end, Loris Prattes, Benjamin Leuchter and Maurits Sandberg failed to make it to the finish.
