Orós Wins at Wellington and Takes the Championship Lead
Marc Orós brought his Mercedes-Benz home 3.154 seconds ahead of Ayrton Titos after a hard 42 laps at Wellington 500 THR. The victory, his first in the Championship, carried the Spaniard from fourth in the table to its head.
A race recovered, then commanded
There was little room for composure in the opening miles at Wellington 500 THR, where the Northern Hairpin immediately sorted the field into those who had escaped cleanly and those obliged to begin again. Orós was among the latter. Running second, he lost a place on the second lap amid incidents around the Northern Hairpin and Town Hall Center. It was not an auspicious beginning for a driver who had arrived fourth in the Championship.
Yet the Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.5-16 Evolution II soon reappeared where it mattered. Orós worked his way back into contention and, once clear at the front, sustained the effort over the full 42 laps. He reached the flag 3.154 seconds ahead of Ayrton Titos, a margin sufficient to make the result soundly earned without disguising the pressure of the occasion.
It was Orós's first win of the Championship and his first recorded main-event victory. More importantly, it transformed the table. Having begun ten points behind SDH-M ~ HappyKojot and three behind Kuba Palubicki, Orós emerged with 108 points and the Championship lead.
Titos and NeckR888 settle the podium
Titos's second place was achieved by a route scarcely less complicated. The other Spanish Mercedes driver was shuffled from fifth to seventh on lap four after incidents around Town Hall Center and Chaffer´s Street, but he recovered steadily to become Orós's nearest pursuer by the end.
Behind him came NeckR888 in the Nissan Skyline R31 2000 GTS-R, third in the official classification. The contest for second was as close as the record could show, Titos and NeckR888 being separated by no recorded time at their final crossing. NeckR888 nevertheless carried a 20-second Race Control penalty, one of two matters considered after the race, yet retained the final podium place.
The result gave the front three a notably varied character: two Mercedes-Benz cars first and second, the Nissan third, and each driver having had to negotiate a race in which the street circuit offered few quiet passages. Boby Vakuinof's Alfa Romeo took fourth, ahead of Attila Diner in another Alfa Romeo.
Diner's long return
Diner's fifth place was one of the more substantial recoveries of the afternoon. After the second lap he was listed as low as 18th, the confusion of the early running having reached far beyond the leaders. From there the German drove back into the leading group and, by the latter stages, had brought Jaroslav Cerny and the BMW M3 into his immediate concern.
Their contest became particularly sharp from lap 31 onwards. Diner moved ahead by lap 34, Cerny reclaimed the advantage two laps later, and Diner was back in front on lap 37. The Alfa held fifth to the finish, with Cerny sixth in the BMW. Diner also came within nine thousandths of Adam Celárek's fastest lap, Celárek's 1:25.770 standing as the quickest tour of the race.
Celárek's Holden Commodore eventually completed the top ten, while the points available above him had been claimed by FMG's Nissan in seventh, Jacopo Hrynecko's BMW in eighth and Alfie Bevan's BMW in ninth.
The fights behind
The order further back did not settle quickly. FMG and Bevan spent much of the first three quarters of the race in close company, changing places before lap 10, again before lap 17, and once more shortly after lap 32. FMG ultimately had the stronger classification in seventh, Bevan ninth, but their prolonged dispute was a fair reflection of Wellington's character: a place won was seldom secure for long.
The early lap also marked the race of the man who had led the Championship. HappyKojot was classified 17th after completing 41 laps in the Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth. His result was the crucial counterpart to Orós's victory, while the Championship's dropped-score rule meant that the 18 points earned at Wellington did not count towards HappyKojot's total at this stage.
Knechtel, another of the pre-race leaders, finished 12th in his Alfa Romeo. Palubicki did not take part, leaving the final figures with Orós on 108 points and both Palubicki and HappyKojot on 102.
Wellington therefore supplied more than a winner. It gave Marc Orós the result he had lacked in an already crowded Championship contest, and it did so after the race had first demanded that he recover from its earliest disorder. In a field of several marques and many competing ambitions, the Mercedes-Benz driver found the necessary margin when it counted.