MERTEL Motorsport fought in the second round of the TCR Eastern Europe at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria.

After a rather difficult first round at the Balaton racetrack, MERTEL Motorsport aimed clearly to improve the situation and the standings of all the three drivers. Piloted by Renè Kircher is No 8, former season second place  overall and Junior Winner and No 9 piloted by Davit Kajaia the Georgian national race driver and last years P4 in the Championship. The two are joined by young aspiring female talent Jordan Dolischka who had a strong performance in the first race at Balaton an now is going to learn and improve even more on the Honda Civic TCR.

The weekend started with bad weather and difficult conditions and rain. The team tried to improve the cars and the set-ups to find the time that was missing during the Balaton round but it was very difficult through the weather conditions.

In the first qualifying the efforts did not pay out with P5 for René Kircher, P11 for Davit Kajaia and P12 for Jordan Dolischka, the team final landed on P3. The later race of Saturday: by a strong performance of René Kircher achieving P4 we were able to follow the main group of the currently unbeatable Hyundai Elantras and the Hyundai i30 of Attila Bucsi. Davit played a solid role in the middle part of the field, achieving P6 whereas Jordan was following on the last but one position where she is still learning a lot about touring car racing.

On Sunday in the usual process of turning the first places, the team had again tried to provide the perfect set-up for the car but the warm temperatures made it very difficult again to change from the rainy set-ups to the warm weather set-ups and it was even more difficult for the team to find the right one.

The drivers were fighting very hard but were chanceless to stay in the top group and ended up on position P8 Kajaia, P11 Dolischka. René Kircher was super unhappy when due to a slight crash in the middle of the race he damaged his car which led to a DNF. Davit was fighting very very hard at least to gain P8. Jordan Dolischka did a good improvement and was able to follow the field and also had several overtaking actions throughout the race where we can really see her abilities and improvement in driving.

In spite of everything, the Red Bull Ring weekend was a rather not successful one for the team – as we are still trying to find the maximum performance in order to follow the first positions in the Championship. Nevertheless, procedures and technical things are to be changed before the team will return to Slovakiaring where last year MERTEL Motorsport came in on two times P2 for Davit and P3 in Junior Trophy for René and is super happy to return to this racetrack.

Please follow us on instagram or stream delivering successful and exciting races at the TCR Eeastern Europe!

https://www.instagram.com/mertelmotorsport/

https://www.youtube.com/@tcreasterneurope2289