Ielasi & Shimasaki take Matrix International Race wins
After a long winning hiatus, Daniele Ielasi got back into the victory lane on international soil after taking the win over the Mugen duo of Robert Pietsch and JJ Wang at the recent 1st edition of the Matrix International Championship held at the Tom Racing Circuit in Hong Kong. Proving himself strong since the beginning of the race, not having to worry about fuel consumption as in qualifying, the WRC/Novarossi Ielasi Tuned driver was able to put pressure on the Top Qualifier of the race, Robert Pietsch and take advantage of a contact between the German and a backmarker, taking the lead and keeping his car ahead of the field to take a deserved win over Robert and a recovering JJ Wang. Bad luck for Shinya Shimasaki though, who would eventually save his day winning 1/10th scale.
Daniele said “finally I was able to push, not having to save fuel and my car felt extremely good”. With both car and engine being absolutely on point, after starting from P2 he began closing on Robert Pietsch, not allowing the German to slow down his pace and forcing him to drive aggressively to maintain the lead. The perfect occasion for overtaking the Mugen driver arose when Robert made contact with a backmarker, damaging his car’s bodyshell and allowing Daniele to pass. Mixing his impressive speed with a convincing consistency, he was then able to maintain the 2-seconds lead over the Mugen driver for the remaining minutes of racing.
After a week spent setting the pace for everybody else, Robert was clearly disappointed with the final result. Sent to represent Picco, the German stated “It’s a shame that I had that unlucky contact with a back marker, but this is racing and Daniele drove great to a deserved win”. First of the non-locals to get to grips with the track, the Mugen designer and developer was leading the race but said “he always had to keep an eye on Daniele”, adding that without the incident the final could have for sure been more exciting.
The podium was rounded out by JJ Wang, the Chinese driver struggling with his package for the whole weekend managed to scrape into the main final and capitalised the opportunity starting from number 10 and recovering to finish 3rd. “The result brings a bit of relief, but there’s a lot of work to do to become competitive” said the Matrix team driver, who will focus on this class in preparation for the Worlds later this year.
The 200mm class saw a clear domination by Shinya Shimasaki, who after sweeping all the qualifying rounds, went to take a tone-to-tone win with his Novarossi-powered KM car. “After having problems in the 1/8th final this win saves my day” said the unchallenged Japanese, who used to race at TRC and was very fast since the first days of practice. “No race is easy to win” he added, stating that he was very happy with how his package worked throughout the 45 minutes of the final.
Source: Matrix [matrix-tyres.com]
