Leading the NASCAR Brasil regular season standings, Gabriel Casagrande endured a Saturday full of challenges on the Circuito dos Cristais’ oval in Curvelo (MG), the stage for the final round of the category’s regular season before the playoffs. Winner of the previous stage, the AMattheis Vogel driver will start from the ninth row after having had little time on the oval, largely due to his trip to compete in NASCAR in the United States last Thursday in Bristol.
“It was a marathon to get here this morning very early in Curvelo, but the Bristol experience was unique and special. I believe entering qualifying earlier and with the track hotter did indeed disrupt things a bit, but it wasn’t what made us fall so far behind. In the free practice I wasn’t even close to the fastest. We tried making a radical setup adjustment from practice to qualifying and it didn’t solve it. Now we’ll try a bit more to see if we can improve. It’s tricky because this is a championship decision; the regular season ends tomorrow and we don’t have the chance to compete at the front there. But we’ll do what we can, as always, and whatever is meant to be will be,” analyzes Casagrande, who is sponsored by Jupiter Batteries, Axalta, Cresol, OnPetro, STP, RP Info, UFI Filters and Aeropark Camboriú.
Casagrande totals 193 points and holds a 12-point lead over the competition’s runner-up. This Sunday, another 50 points will be up for grabs, with 25 points awarded to the winner of the first race and another 25 to the winner of the second race. A three-time NASCAR Brasil Special Edition champion and the overall champion in 2024, Casagrande outlined how he plans to try to gain positions in Sunday’s races.
“It’s a track where passing is possible, but I’m not sure if this will be a great recovery show. If I keep the car this way, it will be nearly impossible to leave the position I’m in and move forward. If we manage to achieve a performance gap, then we’ll try to chase those overtaking points, which aren’t many, but to try to induce the other drivers to make mistakes so we can climb the steps. I imagine there will, of course, be some incidents, which always happen, and we have to try to benefit from that, since the performance hasn’t shown up yet,” explains Casagrande.
The first race will be held at 9:00 a.m. local time on Sunday, and the second race is scheduled for 2:10 p.m. The event will be broadcast by SBT, ESPN, Disney+ and YouTube.
