Advait Deodhar stepped up to NASCAR Whelen Euro Series’ EuroNASCAR PRO division in 2023 after he was signed by the Academy / Alex Caffi Motorsport team to race the No. 1 Ford Mustang. The Indian driver had little time to test his new machinery, but he got the best out of the NASCAR GP Spain at Circuit Ricardo Tormo. Two podium finishes in the Challenger Trophy were enough to hand Deodhar the lead in the special classification, ahead of Kenko Miura and Fabrizio Armetta.
Deodhar previously experienced the competitive atmosphere in both EuroNASCAR Club Challenge and EuroNASCAR 2 before moving up to EuroNASCAR PRO. With a prior overall victory in EuroNASCAR 2 in his home race at Brands Hatch in 2021, the 33-year old driver from Mumbai, who currently resides in London, knows what it takes to be a top contender in the series. The weekend at Valencia was a validation of Deodhar’s talents, as a double podium finish in the Challenger Trophy and his maiden overall top-10 finish in the Sunday race propelled him to the top of the leaderboard among bronze and silver rated drivers.
“Luckily I brought back the car in one piece,” said Deodhar after his EuroNASCAR PRO debut on Saturday. “It was a struggle and I’m very unhappy with my driving. I just couldn’t adapt to the grip and I was overdriving the car all the time, so I started going backwards. We have a lot to learn from this and there are many steps to take forward. I will see and take a look at what we can improve in the future. When the grip reduces you really need to tune it down a bit and find the grip. Overdriving the car causes slipping and sliding. That doesn’t work and therefore I need to find a solution to have the right balance and reduce the entry speed in turns when the race evolves.”
The battle for the top step in the Challenger Trophy was hotly contested. Two close finishes determined the winners in the two races held at the 4.005 km Circuit Ricardo Tormo. The first race on Saturday saw The Club Motorsport’s Fabrizio Armetta take the top step by the slimmest of margins. The Italian had finished 5.010 seconds ahead of fellow countryman Massimiliano Lanza on the line, but a 5-second time penalty for an avoidable collision meant that they were separated by just 0.010 seconds in the final results.
Armetta was primed to make it a double win on Sunday, but contact in the second restart eliminated him from contention. In the end, it was Armetta’s teammate Riccardo Romagnoli who grabbed the victory in the Challenger Trophy. Romagnoli recovered from a first-lap incident with Lanza and survived two restart periods to win the battle by 0.778 seconds from Deodhar. Team Japan Needs24’s Kenko Miura finished third, which was enough to put him second behind Deodhar in the overall classifications with a gap of just 3 points.
The Club Motorsport’s duo of Armetta and Romagnoli are currently third and fourth in the standings. They are followed by Racingfuel Motorsport’s Alina Loibnegger, who sits in fifth after she enjoyed a solid debut weekend in EuroNASCAR PRO. Veteran driver Dario Caso is sixth ahead of the rookie Thomas Toffel while Stefano Attianese, Miguel Gomes, and Michaela Dorcikova round out the top-10 positions. Simone Laureti, Massimiliano Lanza, and Christoph Lenz complete the Challenger Trophy rankings and will get plenty of opportunities to mount a comeback in the upcoming rounds of the season.
The 2023 NASCAR Whelen Euro Series season will continue its action on 17-18 June for Deodhar’s home round and the site of his victory in EuroNASCAR 2: the American SpeedFest held at Brands Hatch’s Indy Circuit in the United Kingdom. All qualifying and races will be streamed live on EuroNASCAR’s YouTube channel, Motorsport.tv and various television services around the week.
Featured image by NASCAR Whelen Euro Series / Bart Dehaese
