Race 1As the lights went out for the opening race of the year, pole-sitter Petr Vorlicek reacted quickest to take the holeshot ahead of Milan Sitniansky, Diego Monticelli, Luca Ciaglia and Kevin Fagre. Giovanni Bussei was 7th behind Lorenzo Promutico.
For the first two laps the positions remained the same, but the first rider to start advancing was Bussei; first making the most of a mistake from Promutico who fell back to 13th. The following lap and Bussei was 5th after passing Fagre and two laps later the Italian found himself in 4th when Ciaglia fell to 7th.
Despite getting his head down Bussei was not able to close in on the leaders and when the first three riders eventually crossed the finish line, they did so in the same positions they started, with Vorlicek taking the first win of the season from Sitniansky and Monticelli. Bussei was 4th with Fagre 5th.
Race 2
The cloudy skies from earlier in the day finally gave way to rain, but despite that, it was once again the two Czech riders that led the way with Vorlicek edging out Sitniansky. Monticelli was 3rd with Bussei getting away from the lights in 4th, three places better than his first race.
As the S2 riders crossed the line at the end of the first lap the order was unchanged; Vorlicek, Sitniansky, Monticelli, Bussei and Luca Ciaglia and remained so for the next lap as well.
On Lap 3 Ciaglia was pushed back to 6th as the Swede Kevin Fagre made his move on the Italian whilst things heated up at the front; Milan Sitniansky was now less than half a second off of Vorlicek.
Vorlicek responded to the tune of 0.2 but while the two Czech’s were fighting over the lead Bussei carved his way past Monticelli into 3rd on Lap five. All of a sudden we were looking at a three-way battle for the lead and over the next two laps Bussei turned on the afterburners and put himself into contention.
On Lap 8 Bussei was up to 2nd after passing Sitniansky, the Italian splitting the two Czech riders for the first time this weekend, and as the leaders crossed the line to start Lap 10 Vorlicek was a sitting duck; Bussei had him well in his sights. The gap was down to 0.099!
Vorlicek wasn’t going down without a fight though and kept the Italian at bay for another three laps, but by Lap 13 we had a new leader, as Bussei pushed his way through, opening up a 2.8 second advantage immediately.
Despite getting the gap back to 0.7s on the very next lap, Vorlicek was forced to be content with 2nd as Bussei crossed the line 2.3s clear for his first win of the season.
Vorlicek and Sitniansky rounded out the top three.
Fourth belonged to Fagre after passing Monticelli on Lap 9, with the Italian eventually coming home 6th after being passed by John Stambeck on the final lap; the Swede coming from outside the top 10 on the opening lap.
The first S2 podium of the year belonged to Vorlicek with a 1-2. Bussei took second overall with his 4-1 and third belonged to Sitniansky who took 2-3.
