Final Rounds of Dutch Supercar Challenge at Assen.

Alex Van't Hoff Claims Championship Title, Mosler Challenge Titl

Despite the often dreadful weather, Martin Short makes no secret of the fact that Dutch Supercar Challenge is one of his favourite series to drive in.  So it was with a spring in the step that the Rollcentre team took the new Cup Car over for its first outing in DSC and working on the theory you can’t have too much of a good thing, introduced Steve Quick  to the ‘Cloggie Culture’ in the Fisken’s backed Mosler MT900 for his first outing in The Netherland’s series.

Saturday’s race saw the Cup Car race fit, although not without some problems which saw the team working hard the night before sorting out troubles with the clutch, flywheel and airbox amongst others.

Slightly overlooked in all the furore was the fact that Alex van ‘t Hoff of the Mad and Daring Team, was a contender for the championship title, although it was going down to the wire as he was among other contenders that could easily have claimed the title.

The first race on Saturday opened with monsoon-like conditions and it caused problems for many drivers finding the standing water causing slides and spins. Out at the front, Cor Euser was doing his best to fend off a thundering drive from Short, but by the ninth lap he had to bow to the inevitable and Short took the lead.  After the pitstops it was a still charging Short who pulled out a 30 second lead into the final lap, when the conditions bit back and dumped him out of the running.

“Well the car was an absolute missile” said Short later, “But billy mistake, huge puddle and there was nothing I could do!  Car absolutely amazing, driver absolute plonker!”  As the team worked to repair the damage into the night, Martin Short was outside practicing kicking himself.

On Sunday, a shower just before the start of the race saw many drivers electing to start on wets, but Martin went for intermediates, and it soon paid off. Despite starting 12th on the grid he was soon up with the front runners and battling away with Cor Euser again.  A battle which continued down to the wire with Euser claiming the top step of the podium by a cigarette paper. 

Despite troubles on Saturday’s race, Berry van Elk picked up a fourth place in Sunday’s race, and is the well deserved overall winner of the Mosler Challenge within Dutch Supercar.  And what of Alex van’t Hoff?   Fernando Alonso has been saying all season that to win the championship he needed to be on the podium as much as possible and that is a theory that van ‘t Hoff must be in full agreement with.  Despite not claiming a top step, he has consistently found form and podium places, and although it looked during the weekend that things were conspiring against him, he had enough points at the end to claim the Title of GT Champion.  An engine problem after the first rounds at Silverstone, saw him back in his Ferrari for two of the DSC rounds, but he switched back to the Mosler at the first opportunity and had brought home the laurels in his first season with Mosler as his weapon of choice.  His closest rival Peter Versluis had a DNF on Saturday, and despite a problem with a wheelnut which saw him sitting in the pits for two minutes longer than necessary, Alex still managed to finish high enough to do the business.  Congratulations to him on a superb season.

Rene Wijnen and Pieter Dubois in their newly purchased Kembit Carworld Motorsport Mosler have used the final two rounds of this season to bed the car in, and investigate what needs to be worked on over the winter.  They scored an 18th place in the first round and up to 10th place in the second.  We look forward to them having a good season for 2011.

Steve Quick did a solid job all weekend, very much in at the deep end with fairly horrendous conditions. Despite a few spins he further extended his learning curve and was very pleased with his weekend.