The second round of the 2021 Spanish Autocross Championship was held on the first weekend of May in the town of Esplús in Valencia with more than a hundred entries and good results again for the drivers who competed in three of the categories at the wheel of different models of Speed Car.
A special highlight was the total dominance exercised in the Junior category by the Xtrem manufactured by Industrias Lahoz, a brilliant top four with win for Pol Durán ahead of his brand mates Aleix Costa, Quim González and Josep Aranda. There was also a double win for Speed Car in Division III as Enric De María won with the TTX both in the overall standings and in the 1.6 Trophy, in which the second position was for Ares Lahoz with another TTX. In addition, Eduard Bañeres climbed to the absolute podium of Division III in third place in a TTR and Joan Salichs was second in the always competitive CarCross category with a Speed Car Xtrem.
Succesfull comeback for Joan Enric De María. The Speed Car driver, a four-time Division III Spanish champion, returned to the series at the wheel of a TTX and won in Esplús. De María set the second best time in qualifying, behind hir brand mate and current category champion Ares Lahoz, who was the fastest of all participants with another TTX. Eduard Bañeres, in a Speed Car TTR, was fifth.
In the heats, Ares scored a win and two seconds that assured her the pole-position for the final. Unfortunately, mechanicak issues forced her to slow down and she finished fifth, second in the 1.6 Trophy.
De María started the final right next to her, from the center of the front row, having also won one of the heats. The Lleida Team driver stayed the whole race in the fight for victory and ended up winning although he crossed second under the checkered flag because the driver who preceded him for barely half a second was hit with a penalty for false start. For De Maria it was also the first position in the 1.6 trophy with his TTX.
In the podium of the Division III was also the other Speed Car driver, Eduard Bañeres, who repeated in Esplús the third position achieved in Lleida at the end of March.
The CarCross division was again the one with the most participants, a total of fifty on this occasion of which thirteen were pilots of the two models of Speed Car approved for the same, the Xtrem, with nine units, and the Wonder with FIA specifications, whose number was four on this occasion.
The best result was achieved by Joan Salichs, who was in the top positions all weekend. The driver of the Xtrem number 3 was third in qualifying, on pole in the final after winning his three heats, and crossed the finish in second place, result that puts him in front of the overall standings of the Spanish championship after the first two rounds.
The next three Speed Cars were the Wonders driven by Priat Vincent, Josep Arqué and Juanjo Moll, who finished respectively in eighth, ninth and twelfth places. Moll, who started from the front row of the grid in the final after achieving a first and two seconds in the heats, was badly hampered by the contact with the Xtrem of Fontán in the start of the race that made him lose a lot of time while his brand mate has to retire.
The remaining of the six Speed Car drivers who qualified for the top fifteen race of the weekend, Arnau Biosca, couldn't finish the race, he could only complete one lap and was classified in 14th place.
Spectacular result for Speed Car riders in the Junior Car Cross category. Four of them achieved the best four times in qualifying, Pol Durán being the fastest ahead of Quim González, Aleix Costa and Josep Aranda. Then, Durán, Aranda and González shared the wins in the three heats, with a win for each. And in the final the top four at the end of the ten laps were Xtrem drivers. Pol Durán claimed victory, just a couple of tenths ahead of Aleix Costa, with Quim González crossing third under the checkered flag a couple of seconds later and Josep Aranda being fourth, five seconds behind the winner
The representation of Speed Car in the category reserved to the youngest promises of the national autocross was completed by Julia Vaqueras, who had no luck in the final as she ended up out of the race in the always busy first lap.
-> CarCross Junior results (pdf file)
Pictures: CEAX RFEdA press service
