The inaugural round of the All-wheel-drive Winter Series was held in slippery and bumpy Blackwood Rallycross track with the powerful FXO GTR. 14 drivers came for this challenge and 8 of them managed to beat 1 minute mark in qualifying, which was won by estonian Reno, who lapped this 1.8 km track in 58.05 seconds.

The 3-wide starting grid at this track already meant that contact in turn one will be unavoidable - a lot of cars were shoved wide, followed by recovery tries, which led to even more contacts in next few turns. The luckiest of all was V.Pitkänen, even starting from outside of row 2, he managed to pick up early lead and pull away from all the trouble behind. First few laps were pretty much chaotic, when almost all drivers fought for positions, searching for chances to make easy passes on cars out of control, while trying to survive the mess around.

After the quite chaotic first laps, the real racing started, where most found their rhythm and feeling for track - a lot of battles for position were held, but this track doesn't offer too many overtaking possibilities, if any at all, so drivers had to find (or sometimes create) those by themselves. At the front of field the battle for lead was held by 2 red cars - V.Pitkänen and Reno, while the finn was leading first laps after escaping troubles, Reno chased him down and searched for a chance to take over race lead. He found in at the end of lap 7, when having a better drive out of last turn, estonian squeezed by in front stretch to complete the pass before turn one and after that he never gave up the lead on the way to win this race. Even the top 3 didn't switch positions for the rest of the race, the rest of field had a lot of battles through out the race, for example N.Ðakovic posted his overtake for 4th position in late stages of the race.

So the race was won by estonian spdo driver Reno, who set also the fastest lap of the race while pulling away from the rest, taking both bonus points together with 15 points for a win in a round. Finnland's V.Pitkänen took home 13 points for 2nd place finish, but the best driver for series hosting nation Latvia was Fuller, who run a strong race by finishing 3rd. After round 1 the FXR Master and Cross Challenge standings of course are same as overall standings, but in Teams championship spdoRacing took a commanding lead thanks to both drivers finishing in top 6, followed by series hosters - TheReality Racing Team. In Nations cup the situation is different - Latvia leads by just 1 point over Finland and 3 points over Estonia.

Round 1 official results / Series standings

There is only one week break between first 2 rounds, so already next monday AWS continues with Kyoto Grand Prix 100 (where 100 presents the nominated distance in kilometers), which will be driven by the 2nd car of the series - RB4 GT. Kyoto GP Long will definitely feel at least twice as wide than round 1 track, but the average speeds will be higher even with the slower car.

Sign-ups for the series are still open, if interested, check AWS info thread.