Car 54 driven by Thomas Flohr, Francesco Castellacci and Davide Rigon finished fifteenth at the end of the race held on the Brazilian track of Interlagos, where the LMGT3 class cars made their debut in front of 73,205 spectators who attended the event over the weekend.
It was a regular race, held in dry track conditions and with temperatures not too high. The start was made by the Bronze drivers of both crews, with Heriau in the number 55 capable of recovering several positions until reaching third place in the first hour of the race, only to slip back due to a Drive Through issued for infringement of the Full Course Yellow procedure.
Flohr’s number 54 was less fortunate, involved in a couple of contacts, the second of which forced the team to make a long stop to repair the left rear suspension arms, returning 20 laps behind.
The number 55 car remained in the fight for the top ten positions during the subsequent stints of Simon Mann and Ferrari official driver Alessio Rovera, arriving in the final hour to fight for fourth place until the chequered flag, which fell at 17.30 local time with an air temperature of 15 °C and a track temperature of 22 °C, crossing the finish line in sixth place with 212 laps completed.
“It was a very challenging debut for me in Brazil. I really liked the circuit, while the race was compromised by the penalty after the contact with the Lamborghini but we didn’t have the chance to be competitive in any case”, admits Rovera.
“We still gave it our all and sixth place, from this point of view, is not such a bad result even if we had different ambitions. The car also performed well with the tyres but today we really had no way of getting a different result”.
#54 AF Corse Ferrari 296 LMGT3 View: Thomas Flohr, Francesco Castellacci, Davide Rigon
Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images
The number 54 also finished the race, finishing in fifteenth place with Flohr, Castellacci and Maranello factory driver Rigon, a result conditioned by the interventions to the car already mentioned.
“A rather difficult race, surely Thomas Flohr lost a bit of confidence after the spin in qualifying. Unfortunately we were hit by two opponents, the second contact damaged our car and ruined the race”, regrets Rigon.
“We could have still aimed for a fifth or sixth place at most, no more, because we are still struggling a lot. We set off again to get to the finish line and make Thomas do a lot of laps, we hope to have better luck at the next appointment”.
The two Ferrari 296 LMGT3s of Vista AF Corse are now preparing for the next round of the FIA WEC, scheduled from 30 August to 1 September at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, USA.
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