A clinical drive in OPEN Round 3 allowed Thomas Toffel to extend his perfect win streak at Le Castellet – The Swiss driver further established his status as the driver to beat in the NASCAR Euro Series OPEN championship
- Thomas Toffel and THT by Race Art remained unstoppable in France
- The Swiss held a commanding lead over Raphael Lessard
- Lessard grabbed his maiden OPEN podium with Vladimiros Tziortzis completing the top-3
The story of the 2026 NASCAR Euro Series OPEN season started with Thomas Toffel’s sweep in Spain and at the start of the next chapter in France, the tale continued in the same fashion. Toffel kept his perfect streak in the first race at Circuit Paul Ricard with a commanding performance, taking the lead over from pole sitter Vladimiros Tziortzis at the opening lap and maintained enough gap to a fast charging Raphael Lessard to bring home his and THT by Race Art’s third consecutive victory. The result confirmed Toffel’s status as the driver to beat and left the field wondering one thing: Who can step up to challenge the Swiss?
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“The pace was really good, we did some work yesterday and we made really good progress,” said Toffel, standing beside his purple #34 Chevrolet Camaro in Victory Lane. “That was so important because at the beginning of the weekend, Vladimiros was one second per lap ahead. I’m here to fight for the championship. I trained a lot during the winter at Valencia, so it was sort of my home race there, but here it’s a new track for everybody. At the moment I think we’re good, but we really have to stay focused because we also had a little bit of luck and there are a lot of cars racing here today, so tomorrow or the next weekend could be a different story.”
Despite missing out on the top step of the podium, Lessard made the French fans excited with all the action that he provided. Starting from tenth, the Canadian picked off his rivals one by one and made his way through to second by the penultimate lap. It was a drive worthy of his status as one of OPEN’s primary championship contenders. Lessard, driving for Alumitec Racing, also clocked the fastest lap that will give him pole position on Sunday’s OPEN Round 4. Tziortzis had difficulties to maintain the pace at the front, but the Cypriot did enough to secure the final podium position.
Home crowd favorite Thomas Dombrowski was an excellent fourth ahead of Gil Linster, who continued to be consistent and is still Toffel’s closest contender in the OPEN championship so far. Teammate Martin Doubek crossed the line in sixth, right in front of Legend Trophy’s eternal rivals Melvin de Groot and Claudio Cappelli. Both drivers continued to be unseparated and for OPEN Round 3, it was de Groot who gained the victory from Cappelli, but the Italian also secured important points for the overall battle.
Florian Richard celebrated a Master Trophy win at his home NASCAR GP in ninth, having also scored the bonus points for most positions gained. The Frenchman gained nine positions and fend off Maxim van Laere by just 0.241 seconds. Richard and van Laere completed the top-10 positions with Kenko Miura rounding the Legend Trophy podium in 11th. Dominique Schaak took home the third prize in Master Trophy in 12th while Bremotion teammate Beitske Visser stormed her way from a pit lane start to 14th, clinching the Lady Trophy victory ahead of Happinessa and Mariam Davitidze.
NASCAR Euro Series’ homecoming is already a success and it will be capped off with two races to close the NASCAR GP France weekend at Le Castellet near Marseille. OPEN division will turn up the wick at 10:30 AM CEST before the top V8GP division roar their engines at 14:35 CEST. While fans wait for the next set of action, NASCAR Euro Series will continue to deliver updates from the official website and social media accounts. If you haven’t tuned in to the broadcasts, then find out how to watch the excitement from www.nascar.eu/watch.
Featured image by NASCAR Euro Series / Bart Dehaese
