After two rounds in 2023 ESET V4 Cup staged its traditional round at Red Bull Ring, locally called Rundstreckentrophy. Opening round was held for the first time on Oschersleben followed by Hungaroring, which is usually start Ing round of the season.
Following traditional series from Central Europe took part on this weekend:
- D4/ESET Sprint, Endurance
- TCR Eastern Europe (some of the grid shown bellow)
- D2/Drexler Formel Cup
- ACCR F4 Championship
These were joined by Supercar Challenge, BMW M2 Cup Benelux and Suzuki Cup Europe.
The D4/ESET races were all dominated by Filip Salaquarda in his ISR Audi R8 LMS Evo II. His efforts were compromised when he was beaten in both sprint qualifyings by unrestricted Lamborghini Huracán GT3 of Alexander Ober, but Salaquarda was quick to get around him on the opening laps of each of the races. This allowed him to run away into large lead, which was only reduced by safety cars. Sunday's morning race was made more difficult due to over night rain. The race started wet, but the racing line quickly dried out. The second race brought much better conditions with sun going out and temperature reaching over 20 °C.
The rest of the field comprised of GT3, GTC and GTX cars. In GT3 class there among others was a Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo with Miro Konopka, Mercedes AMG GT3 Evo of Libor Milota, BMW M4 GT3 of Gregor Zsigo, traditional Audi R8 LMS Ultra with Petr Kačírek behind the wheel or Ferrari 488 GT3 of Ernst Kirchmayr, who usually joins ESET for his home race.
GTC class was dominated by juniors from Mičánek Motorsport Matěj Pavlíček and Jáchym Galáš. Galáš won in the first sprint race with Pavlíček in second place and the order was reversed in race two. Other notable entries included Porsche 911 GT3 Cup in 992 and 991 versions entered by Austrian and German teams.
GTX class was created in 2022 to make place on the grid for cars, which don't have any specific class where they would fit in. This class is a perfect fit for KTM's unrestricted version of their GT2 car - KTM X-BOW GTX. But this was not the only model allowed in this new class - it attracted and brought back a very familiar car from Czech Racing scene - Pagani Zonda of Antonín Herbeck. This car was pushed ouf of ESET after it oriented itself on GT3 regulations as the main class and there was no room for an old GT1 car. Overtime Herbeck turned this into a silhouette type car with countless modifications. Since then it was either running in German DMV GT championship or parked until it reappeared last year. Sadly reliability did not allow the car to finish any of the sprint races, but in endurance it succesfully crossed the finish line.
The rest of the sprint and endurance field was a mix of cars from GT4 and TCR classes. Main word in GT4 had junior driver Zénó Kovács with new BMW M4 GT4 from Racing Trevor.
BMW M2 Cup Benelux brought their field to Red Bull Ring. The series includes two 1 hour races a Ross the weekend with one on Saturday and onee on Sunday.
Supercar Challenge races are similar to the ESET Endurance series. Two 1 hour races across the weekend with a pít window in the middle for driver changes. The entry list was very interesting as it included a fleet of BMW M6 GT3s with at least 8 example entered. Most of the cars looked like their base colour was left from a factory entered BMW M6 GT3 from the past from NLS/VLN, IGTC or other series. Another point of interested was Bentley Continental GT3, which is already 2 years retired car in factory hands and not pften seen in competition.
There were couple of GT4 and TCR cars, some Radical prototypes and silhouette cars, but the rest of the field were home made racing versions of different BMW cars.
