The first weekend of September the fifth round of the 2023 Spanish Autocross Championship was held in Miranda de Ebro. The competition in Burgos was especially favourable for Speed Car's new Car Cross model, the Wonder, with victory and third place in Car Cross Series for Josep Aranda and Pol Durán, second place for Quim González in Junior and third place for Pep Arqué in Car Cross, all of them at the wheel of the latest Industrias Lahoz product.
Bad luck for the only Speed Car representative in the buggy category, Sabino García. The TTR driver achieved the sixth fastest time in the timed session and qualified fifth for the final after finishing second, third and fourth in the previous rounds. In the decisive race, Sabino could not avoid being involved in the incident that occurred a few metres from the start and which forced the race to be stopped with a red flag, the damage to his Speed Car being enough to prevent him from taking part in the restart of the race. In any case, with the points scored in Miranda de Ebro, Sabino continues to lead the overall standings of the Buggy 1.6 Trophy.
The changing weather conditions meant that the state of the track was very different in the different heats of the qualifying session, which ended up being detrimental to the best placed Speed Car driver in the championship, Pep Arqué. The young Catalan had to come back with his Wonder in the heats after finishing in twenty-sixth place in the timed session and managed to reach fifth place on the grid for the final after winning his last qualifying race after having been sixth and second in the two previous ones. In the final, Arqué was always in the very close fight for the leading positions and entered the finish line in third position, thus achieving his third podium of the year, a result that allows him to maintain the second position in the overall championship with the last two races of the season still to come.
Two other drivers also made it to the final of the always competitive Car Cross category, who took part in the Antonio Vadillo circuit with the Wonder made by Industrias Lahoz after making up from the qualifying session, in which they also had to set times on a very wet track. Both Borja González Granda and Marco Matador made it through to the decisive race in the B Final after finishing thirty-fourth and thirty-sixth respectively in the time trial and twentieth and eighteenth in the heats. In the final neither of them had much luck, Borja finished twelfth while Marco Matador was forced to retire on the first lap.
The Speed Car Wonder drivers, Josep Aranda and Pol Durán, put in another magnificent performance in the Car Cross Series. On this occasion, although Pol was once again the fastest of all the participants and took first place in his three qualifying heats, the victory in the final went to Josep, who had seconded his teammate both in the timed session and in the results of the heats, in which he took two firsts and a fifth place.
Starting from second place on the grid, Aranda immediately took the lead and never relinquished it to cross the chequered flag as the winner with a lead of more than six seconds. He was joined on the podium by Durán, who finished third, a result that keeps him at the top of the overall championship with only the last two rounds of the year remaining.
Quim González continues to lead the overall Junior championship after his second place in Miranda de Ebro. The Speed Car Wonder driver was fifth fastest in the qualifying session before winning two of his three heats to take second place on the starting grid for the final, a position he ended up occupying at the end of the race despite finishing third, as one of the drivers ahead of him at the finish line was subsequently excluded.
As in the previous round of the championship, the other Speed Car representative in Junior was Joan Aranda, who repeated the tenth place achieved in Arteixo with his Speed Car Xtrem after having been twelfth in the timed session and eleventh in the sum of the results of the qualifying rounds.
Pictures: CEAX RFEdA press service
