Raphael Lessard arrived at Autodrom Most facing one of the most important weekends of his first full NASCAR Euro Series campaign. He left the Czech Republic with two trophies, three victories on the season and a much stronger case that he belongs in the championship fight.
The 25-year-old from Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce, Quebec, swept both OPEN races on Aug. 29 and 30, winning them in remarkably different ways. Saturday required a last-lap attack on championship leader Thomas Toffel. Sunday required Lessard to seize the lead almost immediately and then control the race. Together, the victories transformed what had already been a competitive European season into a genuine title push heading toward double-points races in Italy and Belgium.
Two Wins Came From Two Very Different Attacks
Lessard’s first Czech victory was built on patience. In Saturday’s OPEN Round 7, he spent 13 laps behind Toffel as the Swiss championship leader controlled the race. A late caution changed everything, compressing the field and creating a one-lap shootout. Lessard anticipated that Toffel would defend the inside approaching Autodrom Most’s demanding chicane. Instead of following him, the Quebec driver attacked under braking, drew alongside and completed the pass on the final lap. Toffel finished second, while Thomas Dombrowski took third. It was Lessard’s second victory of 2026 and arguably his most dramatic.
Sunday looked very different. Rather than waiting until the final kilometres, Lessard made his decisive move on the opening lap of Round 8. Once ahead of Toffel, he kept the No. 11 Alumitec Racing Ford Mustang in front and prevented his title rival from answering. Toffel again finished second, with Czech driver Martin Doubek third. The result completed Lessard’s first NASCAR Euro Series weekend sweep and lifted his season total to three victories in eight regular-season races.
Autodrom Most Rewarded Lessard’s Braking Confidence
The results were particularly notable because Lessard had never raced at Autodrom Most before the weekend. The Czech circuit stretches 4.212 kilometres and contains 21 corners, mixing fast sections with technical sequences and an especially tight first chicane. Overtaking opportunities can be limited, making braking precision and positioning unusually important. Those characteristics became central to both of Lessard’s victories. Saturday’s winning move came under braking at the chicane, while Sunday’s performance showed that the team had found enough consistency for him to control the race after getting ahead early.
There had already been evidence that Lessard was adapting unusually quickly. During Friday practice, he produced a 1:40.047 lap, which NASCAR Euro Series described as the fastest OPEN practice lap recorded at Most. He finished 0.114 seconds ahead of Claudio Cappelli in the combined practice classification. The performance followed another unofficial record-setting run at Brands Hatch earlier in the season. For a driver experiencing Most for the first time, the pace suggested that the Czech victories were not simply products of restarts or racing luck. Lessard and Alumitec had been among the fastest combinations from the beginning of the weekend.
Three Victories Have Changed the Championship Picture
Lessard’s season had already taken a significant turn before the Czech Republic. His first 2026 victory came at Circuit Paul Ricard in France on May 24, where he recovered after losing positions during a restart and worked his way back to the front. That breakthrough followed a difficult opening stretch in which outright speed had not always translated into victories. By the time the field reached Most, however, Lessard had repeatedly shown that he could run with Toffel, Dombrowski, Gil Linster and the other leading OPEN competitors.
Winning twice in the Czech Republic gave Lessard three victories from eight regular-season races, matching Toffel’s win total. Toffel nevertheless leaves Most as the provisional championship leader with 254 points after the regular-season dropped-result calculation. Dombrowski is 16 points behind and Linster 19 behind, while Lessard sits fourth overall. That position matters less than it might in a conventional championship because the remaining playoff races award double points. Lessard therefore enters the decisive portion of the season outside the top three but carrying something potentially just as valuable: consecutive victories and demonstrated race-winning speed on an unfamiliar circuit.
Alumitec’s No. 11 Became the Car to Beat in Czechia
Lessard’s Czech performance also reinforced the strength of Alumitec Racing’s unusual two-driver arrangement. He joined the organization full-time for 2026 to compete in OPEN, sharing the No. 11 Ford Mustang with former top-division champion Gianmarco Ercoli, who races the same entry in V8GP. Lessard had sampled European NASCAR through a driver-exchange opportunity in 2025, but the 2026 deal turned that experiment into a complete championship campaign. The partnership paired an experienced European frontrunner with a Canadian who had built most of his reputation in North American stock-car racing.
At Most, the combination produced one of the strongest weekends any team could have requested. Lessard won both OPEN races. Ercoli finished second in Saturday’s V8GP contest and then won Sunday’s top-division race despite hurting his thumb after early contact. That meant the No. 11 operation produced three victories and a runner-up finish across the weekend’s four primary races. Lessard also credited the team with adapting the setup as track conditions changed, an important detail considering that Saturday required him to chase Toffel while Sunday gave him the task of managing the race from the front.
The Quebec Racer Has Already Won on Much Bigger NASCAR Stages
For followers of Quebec motorsport, Lessard’s success in Europe is another chapter in a career that began close to home. He grew up in Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce, only minutes from Autodrome Chaudière, and was racing full-sized stock cars while still in his early teens. In 2019, at age 17, he won his NASCAR Pinty’s Series debut at Chaudière. NASCAR Canada records him as the only driver to win his debut event in the series, providing an early demonstration of the ability to adapt quickly that resurfaced years later during his first visit to Most.
His highest-profile North American victory came at Talladega Superspeedway in October 2020. Driving for Kyle Busch Motorsports, the then-19-year-old Lessard was leading when a final-lap caution froze the NASCAR Truck Series field, giving him his first national-series victory. He became the first Quebec-born driver to win in one of NASCAR’s three major U.S. national divisions. Six years later, the competitive setting is very different: Most is a technical European road course rather than a 2.66-mile Alabama superspeedway. Yet the common thread is Lessard’s ability to capitalize when races become compressed, unpredictable and dependent on split-second decisions.
Double Points Mean the Czech Sweep Could Matter Even More
The regular season is finished, but the championship remains far from settled. NASCAR Euro Series now moves to Autodromo di Vallelunga for its Italian semi-finals on Sept. 19 and 20. OPEN competitors are scheduled for 15-lap races each day around the 4.085-kilometre circuit. The championship then concludes at Belgium’s Circuit Zolder on Oct. 17 and 18, again with two races. All four playoff races award double points, dramatically increasing the value of a victory, podium or costly mistake during the final two weekends.
That format gives Lessard an opportunity that his fourth-place ranking alone might understate. Toffel has been the season’s benchmark and remains the points leader, while Dombrowski and Linster have accumulated strong results of their own. Lessard, however, now has three wins and has just demonstrated that he can beat the championship leader both in a last-lap duel and over a longer green-flag run. The Czech sweep did not hand him control of the championship. It did something nearly as important: it ensured that when the double-points races begin in Italy, the Quebec driver will arrive as one of the competitors everyone else has to account for.
