308 Racing Cup: Teddy Clairet eager to build on early advantage at season's first non-French clash 30.05.2018: 308 Racing Cup – Round #2/6 – Spa-Francorchamps (Belgium) The 308 Racing Cup field will gather at Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium, on June 1-2 for Round 3 of the 2018 campaign. The competition is sanctioned

308 Racing Cup – Round #2/6 – Spa-Francorchamps (Belgium)


 
The 308 Racing Cup field will gather at Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium, on June 1-2 for Round 3 of the 2018 campaign. The competition is sanctioned by the FIA as an international racing series and the 20-car entry for this year’s first foray outside of France is further evidence of its popularity.




•    Teddy Clairet, who tops both the provisional overall and Junior leaderboards, will be keen to repeat the form he showed at the season’s opening clashes at Nogaro, France, where he pulled out a five-point lead over the experienced defending champion Julien Briché.



Outsiders Jimmy Clairet, David Pouget and Amaury Richard will also be in action at Spa-Francorchamps where they will be hunting for their first win of the year. The Gentlemen Driver class is provisionally led by Stephane Ventaja ahead of the trip to Belgium.
 


•    Notoriously fast and technically challenging, Spa-Francorchamps stands out as a perfect arena to showcase the 308-horsepower PEUGEOT 308 Racing Cup’s qualities and performance which is equivalent to that of a GT4 car.
 


•    The prize for the winner of the 2018 308 Racing Cup is a PEUGEOT 308 TCR, a car which provided eloquent evidence of its speed by claiming its first world class win in the hands of Aurélien Comte (Team DG Sport) at the WTRC’s fourth round at Zandvoort (Netherlands) on May 20-21.



The same weekend saw Julien Briché, who is backed by PEUGEOT Sport and Total as the 2017 308 Racing Cup champion, made his first appearance in a PEUGEOT 308 TCR. Unfortunately, he was prematurely eliminated when he was punted into a wall at the start of Race 1.





QUOTE, UNQUOTE…
 
Teddy CLAIRET (PUSSIER AUTOMOBILE BY CLAIRET SPORT):


“The two-month break since Nogaro has felt quite long but we’ve used the time to fine-tune our preparations for the second round of the season in Belgium. Last year’s visit to Spa-Francorchamps was entirely dominated by Julien Briché, so we’ve been working hard on my car’s settings and on my driving in a bid to beat him this time around.



 I think we’ve found a good set-up that will allow us to play a front-running role but I have to presume that everyone else has improved, too. Spa-Francorchamps is a hard circuit and the weather sometimes doesn’t want to play ball, but we can’t wait to get there to square up to Julien!”
 




Julien BRICHE (JSB COMPETITION):


“This is only the second meeting of the season, so it’s hard to know whether we will be as competitive at Spa-Francorchamps as we were last year, especially as it’s such a complex circuit and I’m sure my opponents have made good progress, as well. We will do all we can to win at least one race, though!



As far as my TCR Europe outing in the 308 TCR last weekend at Zandvoort is concerned, we were really down on luck. I took delivery of the car before practice and, after a tough qualifying session, I was forced to start from the middle of the grid.




At the start of Race 1, I was hit by another car and the impact sent me crashing into a wall. The team did a fantastic job repairing my 308 TCR but there was simply too much damage and I was halted by a problem in Race 2. We are going to carry on working on the car’s development ahead of the next round.”
 


Jimmy CLAIRET (PUSSIER AUTOMOBILE BY CLAIRET SPORT):


“Like my brother Teddy, I can’t wait for action to begin at Spa! We have used the two-month break to work on the balance of my car, including the onboard cameras in order to leave no stone unturned.


 In 2017, I wasn’t on the greatest of forms at Spa, so we’ve been looking for solutions to be really competitive this year and I think we’ve hit on something. We just need to see how it pans out on the day!”



Marie-Helene BACLE - photos F. Duhamel