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Trophy of Champions - Where legends meet each other

22.07.2013 - The Trophy of Champions short series ended up yesterday (21st of July, 2013), having united the 33 fastest drivers of season 4 on three different and legendary tracks - Monza, the Italian power track; Indianapolis, the American first ever official speedway; and Monte Carlo, the French life taker Circuit of Monaco, having claimed the life of 4 drivers so far.

The chosen car was the highly coveted Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2 Valentino Balboni, specially modified for these tracks.
With an average rating of 2728,043, the competition couldn't possibly be tighter.

Today with us, as usual, we have Francisco Pires, the currently 10th placed in the ranking list and 9th in the Ultimate challenge.

Blazefp's Magazine: Good evening Francisco. So tell us, how do you feel about this series? Was this a good result? Were you expecting this much competitive challengers?

Francisco Pires: Nice to be here again. How do I feel in few words? World of Warcraft [aka WoW] haha. Seriously, this was just great! To be able to race against the best drivers in the world, seeing this much quality in a race is just overwhelming! This was so competitive that in a 2 min track with lots of straights and fast turns and in a slower car compared to Formulas the difference between first and last in qualification was less than 1,5 seconds.
Not just that but also in Monte Carlo, a 110km race, the difference between the first 10 classified was just about 3,6 seconds. I know it because I was the 10th.
I had no idea what to expect at first but I can honestly say that I never considered a 9th place a bad position. On the contrary I'm happy with my results and we are all celebrating with the team even though I think it could go better.
Don't get me wrong, the team did a perfect job, don't see how I could get a better setup with the car and pit-stops were all thought to the second. I just had a bit of bad luck in Indianapolis and practices in Monte Carlo.

BM: Interesting indeed. I see you can talk about this series for hours so let's focus on one at a time. Monza. What went right and what went wrong there?

FP: Haha true, I could go on for hours. Monza was the most interesting in my opinion firstly because it was the first one and I'm fairly sure no one knew what to expect.
The qualifications led me to believe I wasn't close to the best driver in the series even though I was just half a second from the pole. But then, thanks to the team's job too, I climbed up 10 places. 10! From 15th to 5th. In the ultimate series being able to climb this much renewed and boosted my confidence. Still, top 5, besides me, had only French and Italians and that was something I wanted to prevent so there was still work to do. hehe

BM: Yes, somehow French and Italian are really strong in this sport. How about Indianapolis?

FP: This one was weirder. It's more prone to mistakes due to the high speeds and a small one might take you a lot of seconds but sure as hell I wasn't expecting 15 seconds. After what happened in Monza, everyone so close to each other, this was totally unexpected. Heck, the difference between first and second there was higher than the difference between first and last in Monza! I secured a fairly decent place - 8th.
Then in the race all hell breaks loose and I was forced to visit pits 2 times more than what we planned, hence the 10th place.

BM: Understandable. Still not a bad place I guess.

FP: No, but it could go a lot better. But this is part of the race, being lucky takes a lot of work.

BM: Yes, indeed. Right, moving on to Monte Carlo...

FP: This is an awfully beautiful circuit. I now understand why it took the life of 4 drivers already, it took 2 stints out of my training and I didn't risk anything at all! This led to a poor 17th place in qualifications.
I had to risk it all in the race and fortunately it paid off. There are 18 corners on this track and only 5 or 6 places safe enough to overtake. Still I moved up 7 positions. Like Monza, couldn't go any better. And after all of those dangerous 110km the gap between the first 10 drivers was less than 4 seconds. This is less than half a second per driver, we were all in a big line and racing on the edge. It was a really memorable race.

BM: That's incredible. In the end, you were the 9th classified of the Trophy. But surprisingly, above you there was only one Russian, Novikov, and the rest were all Italians and French.

FP: Yes, it's amazing, I don't know what's up with them, they probably begin their driving lessons at 5, I don't know, they're just fast. But I'm happy I could get the Portuguese flag in the top 10, that's more than enough for me.

BM: One last thing, season 5 is getting warmed up, what can you tell us in advance about it?

FP: I'm in F2 World Series, as I wanted, and this one is going to be a hard one. I'm surrounded in rating by 2 Italians and 2 French and that is never good in this area. However, I expect nothing less than another trophy for my case.

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Bold words from the Portuguese Champion. Will he make the difference, or will he fall behind French and Italians? Only time will tell.

This was the Trophy of Champions and beginning of season 5 update from Blazefp's Magazine, we thank you very much for the preference.
We will be back, as usual, at the middle of the season, in the meantime keep your pedal to the medal.