Haatanen finally delivers EOS victory

Joona Haatanen has finally delivered his first win of the Euro Offroad Series, the Team Associated driver winning the season opening 2WD encounter at the Nurburgring in Germany.  Putting himself into contention for the overall victory after winning A2, after just 3-laps it looked like both his and Michal Orlowski’s challenge for the win was over as they made contact and slow marshalling left them both down the order as Haatanen waited having made the contact with the Schumacher driver.  Up front this all played perfectly into the hands of Top Qualifier Lee Martin, the third of the drivers fighting for the overall win.  Holding a huge advantage, a mistake at the double before the straight on lap 7 would cost Martin 2-seconds and allow a brief challenge from fellow Brit Neil Cragg.  Able to quickly re-establish his lead, the penultimate lap would see another much smaller error at the same piece of track but the 3/10ths lost was to prove costly.  With Haatanen getting back up to second, all three drivers ended up on 3-points but with a winning time of 5:16.068 compared to Martin’s 5:16.317 the race was Haatanen’s who kept up Finnish motorsport tradition by taking his achievement completely in his stride.  With his A1 time the slowest of triple finals reigning champion Michal Orlowski had to settle for third place points to open his title defence.

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