Cerny Takes Nürburgring Duel by Two Tenths
Jaroslav Cerny won a changing 19-lap contest at NUR - 718 RST Round 3: Nürburgring Südschleife, beating Adam Celárek by 0.214 seconds after the lead passed between them four times. FMG completed a tightly packed podium and retained the Championship lead.
A race decided on the last lap
There was no disguising the nature of this one. Eight Porsche 718 RS 60 Spyders set out, but for much of the evening the race belonged to Jaroslav Cerny and Adam Celárek, with FMG never far from their argument. Cerny completed the 19 laps first, only 0.214 seconds ahead of his Czech compatriot, to claim his first victory of the Championship and the fifth recorded Main Event win of his career.
Celárek had arrived at the final lap in front, but Cerny recovered the advantage when it mattered. Incidents involving the pair were recorded on the Gegengerade and at Betonkehre during that decisive lap; by its conclusion Cerny was ahead, and the margin between the two was scarcely more than a breath. Both men had sustained a contest which was close enough to make every change of order consequential, yet neither could establish the sort of advantage that would permit calm calculation.
The advantage changes hands
Cerny held the early initiative before Celárek moved ahead by the end of lap five. The lead returned to Cerny on lap eight, only for Celárek to reclaim it three laps later. These were not isolated exchanges at the front: from lap four to the end, FMG, Cerny and Celárek remained grouped within five seconds, a three-car formation that left little room for a private race.
The central phase, from laps eight to fourteen, was especially closely contested between the eventual first two. Celárek remained within immediate reach in the closing stages as well, and the final reversal thus came not as a surprise but as the last movement of a duel that had never settled. Cerny's reward was a victory earned through a race in which the lead could be held, lost and recovered, but never safely possessed.
FMG holds third
FMG brought the third 718 home after 19 laps, 1.987 seconds behind Celárek. It was a significant third place rather than a detached one, for FMG was part of the leading group throughout its long run at the head of the field. The British driver also recorded the fastest lap, a 3:13.535, though Florian Masse came within 0.020 seconds of that mark.
Behind the podium, Valentin Knechtel and Masse both completed the distance in fourth and fifth. Marc Orós was sixth, also on the full 19 laps. The leading positions had been sufficiently compressed to make early losses costly: Masse and Knechtel each lost three places on lap three amid incidents at Achsenschlag and Mühlenbach, while Masse later surrendered another place on lap seven at Nordkehre. Neither disturbance altered the identity of the principal contest, but they underlined how little latitude the front runners had allowed one another.
A late rise in the final table
The points consequence gave Cerny's narrow success an added weight. He had stood tenth before the race, on 29 points, but the win lifts him to fourth in the completed Championship standings on 69. It is an unusually sharp ascent from a single afternoon, and it puts him immediately behind the three men who had shaped the earlier table.
FMG, despite being denied the win, heads the final standings on 77 points. Celárek's second place carries him to 74, while Knechtel is third on 71. Thus Cerny's victory did not dislodge the leader, but it transformed his own standing in the closing reckoning and gave the Championship a final reminder of the depth of the leading group.
Cerny will remember Nürburgring Südschleife not simply for the fractional margin, but for the manner of it: a race repeatedly taken away and retrieved, resolved only when Celárek's resistance had lasted to the very last lap. In a field of identical Spyders, the difference was small enough to be measured in tenths, but large enough to alter the final shape of the table.