The 2023 season is moving into the team chronicles. The last race weekend will stay in our live memories for a while, though. The main reason for that is the performance of Bartsz Groszek, who made his one-event return to TCR Eastern Europe.
The last race weekend of the 2023 TCR Eastern Europe season was held in Brno after a one-year break. The event provided a spectacular show in wonderful weather, spiced up with former F1 cars show.
Unfortunately, our team had just one car in the field. Radim Adámek was forced by health issues to miss his first ever event in TCR Eastern Europe since the beginning of the championship. It seemed for a while that Petr Fulín, who was racing for us in Most, could take Radim's place behind the wheel. It didn't happen at last, so our yellow-black colors were represented only by Bartosz.
He managed to prove that he's still a very fast driver and that he's capable of being as fast as the top of the field in the highly competitive championship. In qualifying he set the third fastest time losing 4 tenths for the 2023 champion Maťo Homola.
Bartosz didn't have a good getaway at the start of race 1 and he lost one place. Being patient enough he was able to overtake one driver and he was classified third.
After a reverse grid Bartosz stood in 7th place at the start of the second race. The beginning of Sunday's race offered a similar scenario as the first race - bad start and a slight drop in the order. Bartosz fought again and with the beautiful surprising maneuver he overtook the race 1 winner Bucsi. After a while he did the same to champion Homola. Unfortunately, Bucsi was able to fight back and get himself back in front of Bartosz. Another position gain was not possible for Bartosz due to “dead” tires and he was classified 7th in the very last race of the 2023 season.
We would like to take that chance to thank all the team members for a great job they did in the 2023 season. Thanks to it we ended up as a third team in the overall team standings of TCR Eastern Europe. Our thanks go also to all of our fans. We're looking forward to the upcoming seasons with all of you.