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After a season 66 that admittedly dragged on a fair bit, season 67 was here to hopefully go a bit quicker. They say time flies when you’re having fun, and when season 67 looked to have a title battle on its hands, it felt the season was over as soon as it had started! Join us on this deep dive as we review the 67th season of Dodge’s nations cup!

The season started off at Brno, with German driver Timo Lienemann taking the first victory of the season. Meanwhile, Vic Torious had started off strong but a series of mid-race collisions damaged his suspension (and later he would lose a wheel), and he brought up the rear of the pack. However, there were still 10 races left to go, and anything could still happen.

The circus then headed to Poznán in Poland, where Torious took a convincing win for his first of the season, in his bid to mount a title challenge. However, Lienemann would place third, scoring 6 precious points that would keep him on top of the standings.

At race #3 in Germany, Vic Torious should have been a favourite to win, given his general strength at the Hockenheimring. However, he struggled in qualifying, failing to even reach the top 10, and one of the other returning drivers took pole – Thailand’s Tor Graves had taken his country’s first – and when a charging Vic Torious fell victim to a lack of grip, Graves took Thailand’s first ever nations cup win, 783 races after their debut and 781 races after their most recent podium, which had also come courtesy of Graves, way back in season 9(!) – it’s safe to say that this was long overdue, and for a country that once found themselves occupying positions as low as 99th, a very welcome win too.

And speaking of memorable wins, the Czech Republic would also receive a long-overdue victory when Jaroslav Janis won at the next race in Zandvoort, to firmly bring himself into the title fight, which if successful, would have also been monumental for the country. This win was the Czechs’ first in over 600 races (their only one prior having come in season 23), and would also give them momentum to pull away from the likes of Iceland and the Cook Islands and towards Ireland (38th), who they would eventually overtake.

Italians Gianni Giudici and Marco Mocci would take victory at Magny-Cours and Valencia respectively, but then a 4-race win streak from Vic Torious would eventually see him win the title at round 10 at Okayama, with a race to spare – the final round at Macau would see Graves pick up his (and Thailand’s) second win, to take the southeast Asian nation to 72nd in the cup – by no means their highest-ever placing but given their history, also nothing to scoff at. Meanwhile, having boasted half of this field, Italy would end up having scored the most points, with Marco Mocci, Luca Persiani, David di Benedetto, Gianni Giudici, Massimo Torre, Giovanni Tedeshi, Marcello Puglisi, Kristian Ghedina and Ignazio Belluardo (9 out of the 17 drivers) scoring 174 points between them. France, Spain and Russia would also see representation this season, although no wins and only a handful of podiums was all Jean de Pourtales, Emilio de Villota and Daniil Move had to offer. In fact, Daniil did move out of the way a lot as he was unintentionally(?) the subject of poorly-timed moves from Vic Torious, which took him out of points/podium contention.

What next?

Season 68 obviously!

As of writing this, season 68 has been completed, so a review of that will be posted soonTM – so keep tuned to the blog!

Thanks for reading!