Miro Konopka

How much did the COVID pandemic affect your 2020 racing plans? Of course, the pandemic has affected everybody around us and even my racing calendar. At the beginning of the year, I still managed to race in the Asian Le Mans series at Bend, Australia. We race there regularly, but after that came a long COVID-19 break. Because we didn’t finish the ALMS series, we were ineligible for the 24 Hours of Le Mans race. That’s probably the only race in the world, for which you really need to qualify. The racing started halfway through the year and luckily, the ESET Cup organisers managed to put together four really solid events with a decent grid. You race regularly in the Central European region. Was there anything that surprised you about this year’s ESET Cup? Probably only that even despite a difficult economic situation, the ESET Cup managed to keep its good quality of racing. Which race weekend did you enjoy the most? For me, the best race was the final Endurance race at Hungaroring. Unfortunately, the Hungarian stewards discredited the whole event, that just does not reflect on the quality of the Central European Zone and ESET Cup racing. And Grobnik, where we had a great battle with Daniel Skalicky with GTs. In Grobnik, you raced with a Lamborghini Huracan, but then you switched to Ligier LMP2. Why? I raced with GT cars for almost twenty years and recently, I’m really against the current politics of the FIA regarding the BoP, even though that’s something out of our hands. So, I’ve decided to try something new. And I’ve been focusing on Le Mans LMP prototypes more over the past two years anyway. Did you manage to race in some other races as well? In July, we took part in a 12-hour race at Monza, where me, my son Matej and Matej Homola won our class with a Lamborghini Huracan. And I also managed to race in GT Open with Zdeno Mikulasek at Hungaroring, where even despite a horrible BoP for our Lamborghini, we managed to take a podium in our class. Right after that race, I sold the car to China and refocused myself even more on the LMP class. What about your 2021 plans? I have many racing plans for the 2021 season again. Let’s wait and see what the COVID pandemic is going to allow us. The Lamborghini Supertrofeo is now heading to 24H Dubai, the new Ginetta LMP3s are on the way to Abu Dhabi for Asian LMS and maybe we’re going to try the TOP level of what we can do in our category, but I don’t want to speak too much about it. But, see you in March at Sebring!