Tio Ellinas pulled off an incredible fightback to become the 2018 Porsche Carrera Cup GB champion on a remarkable final day of the season at Brands Hatch. Coming into the day the Cypriot was eight points behind rival Dino Zamparelli, but two podium finishes were enough to give him the title after both 17-lap races.
Only able to qualify in sixth place on Saturday afternoon, things looked bleak for Tio’s chances. However, Zamparelli lost control of his car on coolant dropped by another entrant while leading race one and fell to the rear of the field, meaning Tio’s third place put the pair level on points going into the final contest of the year.

Starting fifth for that race, Tio did well to avoid a spin from pole-sitter Michael Caine and attempted to take second place from Tom Jackson before being pushed wide and falling back to fourth. He kept calm and patiently waited for his moment to pass Jackson later in the race however, to score a second podium and claim an emotional championship victory.
It was also a weekend of success for DVF Racing’s David Fairbrother and Richard Hawken in the Am category. Capping a sweet return after missing several races this season, David finished second in race one and held off late pressure from Richard in race two to claim third. Richard didn’t leave empty-handed though, as he repeated his result in the season-opener at his local circuit, with a third place in race one.

Tio Ellinas, driver #11

“It’s an amazing feeling. I can’t find the words at the moment to describe it but from the day that this deal happened we’ve just tried our best to do everything possible to make this happen and finally we did it. We were so consistent through all our races, we had many podiums, but we were just missing the edge sometimes to finish on a high but overall it has just been a great, great season.”