Alex Cascatău & Alain Berg clinch overall GT & Prototype Challenge title as last round is cancelled
Alex Cascatău’s maiden season in the GT & Prototype Challenge, the premier Dutch series for prototypes and GTs, sees the Romanian take both the overall and the CN class titles after dominant performances all year long driving together with Alain Berg for BS Racing by Baticonsult.
First of all I'd like to thank the people who made this possible - Baticonsult as our main partner, Alain obviously for bringing me into the team and choosing me as his team-mate, Motul Romania for supplying us with the necessary lubricants and everyone at BS Racing. Even though it's been a strange year for everyone and grids were less competitive than what we wanted, I was able to show that we had the pace from the onset, with very little testing and experience at all-new tracks for me. Also a big thank you to everyone who's supported me, people who regularly keep up and wish me well on social media. We've already started planning for 2021 and I think it's needless to say that I'll be staying with the team. Planning the next steps is very exciting and I hope that we can pull off some big things next year. In the meantime, I'll just appreciate what we've already done this year, and celebrate my first international title!
Little over 12 months after crowning himself champion of the A2 division in Romania’s top circuit racing championship, the Romanian Endurance Series, Alex Cascatău is ready to add another title on his CV. With five wins out of six races, he and Luxembourg’s Alain Berg have become the 2020 GT & Prototype Challenge champions thanks to their mammoth 141-point tally in the CN category. Mathematically, the duo had already bagged the title at the end of last month’s two races at Circuit Park Zandvoort but the recent cancellation of the season-ending Zolder round serves to make them the overall GT & Prototype Challenge champions as well.
In fact, the duo has amassed so many points that they could’ve placed third in the overall Supercar Challenge standings as well, even with one less race contested compared to the GT's, but BS Racing by Baticonsult’s Norma M20 FC could only be entered in the standalone GT & Prototype Challenge. The title is the first for Cascatău since he began competing in championships outside of Romania while team-mate Berg has pulled off the double as he was also the 2019 Radical SR3 champion, his dominating string of victories also making him the outright 2019 GT & Prototype Challenge champion.
How the title was won
Team BS Racing by Baticonsult graduated to the CN class at the beginning of 2020 when seasoned Radical racer Alain Berg decided he was ready for an even greater challenge. Riding the wave of his successful title assault in 2019, Berg planned for more of the same in 2020, albeit in the competitive CN class open to each and every modern FIA-spec CN prototype out there.
BS Racing by Baticonsult secured a Norma M20 FC, the most popular CN car for years, and then bolstered its chances of a good showing in the GT & Prototype Challenge by adding Romanian Alex Cascatău to the team. A Belcar and Romanian Endurance Series regular in 2019, Cascatău shone during his first race behind the wheel of a Norma M20 FC as the Constanța native did the heavy lifting that made a CN-class podium possible for T2 Racing in the 2019 edition of the 24 Hours of Zolder.
While new to the series and, moreover, to the Dutch courses, Cascatău proved once again to be a fast learner and was this season’s pacesetter in qualifying grabbing four poles out of four while driving the Norma. The team converted three of those four poles into race wins during the two consecutive race weekends hosted by TT Circuit Assen, a string of results that put Berg and Cascatău on the path to the title.
With championship rival Tim Joosen of Deldiche Racing missing the third race weekend at Circuit Park Zandvoort, team BS Racing by Baticonsult fought hard to also win the overall GT & Prototype Challenge despite having to do so in a slower Radical SR3 RSX, Berg’s championship winner from 2019. While the CN class wins were a given at Zandvoort, outright victories were out of reach for the less powerful Radical. It’s also important to note that Alex had to learn both of this year’s tracks in what can only be described as inclement weather.
What’s next
The organizers of the Supercar Challenge and the GT & Prototype Challenge have announced that the proposed season-ending round at Circuit Zolder in Belgium has been called off due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Belgium that prompted the local government to resort to lockdown measures. This means BS Racing by Baticonsult gets an early start to its 2021 preparations with the team already exploring a myriad of options and looking forward to even bigger challenges which may even include outings outside of the Benelux region in other series.
2020 Standings
1. Alex Cascatău & Alain Berg – BS Racing by Baticonsult – Norma M20 FC – 141 pts
2. Tim Joosen – Deldiche Racing – Norma M20 FC Turbo – 63 pts
3. Dominik Dierkes – Revolution Cars – Revolution – 48 pts