Season review: Another winning year for Carpek Racing

Austrian driver Tobias Poschik became a driver of the Czech team Carpek Racing and together they were almost unbeatable.

Clio Cup was divided into two classes this season. Drivers behind the wheel of the newest Clio V were fighting in Driver´s classification, drivers with older Clio IV were classified in Trophy class. But because the field of the Clio IV cars was larger and those cars are also faster than newest generation, this season was mostly all about Clio IV and their young drivers fighting for the title.

As the season begun at Hungaroring, it looked like that the battle between Tobias Poschik from Carpek Racing and Szabolcs Lantos from NNR Team Hungary will be really close, as both won first two races. However Poschik had the upper hand in the following events. He fought for wins at Red Bull Ring, where finished second in the first race and retired due to the technical issues in the second one. At TOR Poznań he showed great comeback from the back of the grid in the opening race and finished second. Then he won the second race and also scored victory at Grobnik. Meanwhile Lantos lacked the pace at Red Bull Ring and although he was fast again in Poland and Croatia, it wasn´t enough to beat Poschik.

It all changed at Slovakia Ring, where Lantos had a great speed and won both races. It was an important success for him, because he kept his chances for the title until the last round of the championship at Brno. But Poschik was back on the top in Brno, dominated the opening race and won the title with great margin. The win in the last race, his fifth in the season, was than just an icing on the cake in his great performance.

Tobias Poschik became the new Clio Cup champion with 229 points, Szabolcs Lantos finished second with 175 points. Third was experienced Miha Primožič from Lema Racing, who didn´t manage to win any race, but expected one race, he always finished in TOP3. The only winners beside Poschik and Lantos were Michael Hulm from Steibel Motorsport at Red Bull Ring and Tomáš Pekař from Carpek Racing at TOR Poznań.

Driver and team owner of Carpek Racing Tomáš Pekař also became the champion of Clio V classification, as he started with the newer generation in most of the races. He was also a mentor of another debutant Henrik Seibel, who finished second in Clio V.