Mattia Drudi and Ricardo Feller give the Tresor Orange 1 team the first victory of the season in Race 2 of the Sprint Cup of the GT World Challenge Europe at Brands Hatch, where the first podium arrives for Valentino Rossi and Maxime Martin.
Great performance in particular for the rider from Romagna, who got behind the wheel of the Audi R8 LMS #40 in place of the Swiss and was the author of a series of very fast laps that took him from sixth to first place in the second half of the race, mocking a good part of rivals.
For Mattia it is the first affirmation in the SRO Motorsports Group series, well deserved after many competitive outings and not always lucky due to the talent he is endowed with, managing in the final the good margin he had built on Valentino’s BMW.
This time it must be said that the ‘Doctor’ didn’t really do anything wrong, once he took over from the excellent Martin who had given him the #46 M4 from third, remaining in the slipstream of his rivals, also taking advantage of a Safety Car which intervened from laps 13 to 17 for the cover-up of Alberto Di Folco’s Audi.
Rossi made the most of the free track and the new tires by completing a couple of laps at an excellent pace which allowed him to gain a position without making any mistakes, going out right in front of the BMW #32 of team mates Dries Vanthoor/Charles Weerts which complete the podium to the delight of WRT.
A solid race also for Benjamin Goethe/Nikolaj Kjaergaard, fourth in the #159 McLaren of Garage 59 and followed by the #11 Audi of Lucas Legeret/Christopher Haase (Comtoyou Racing), second in the first part and then down the order.
#40 Tresor Orange 1, Audi R8 LMS GT3 EvoII: Mattia Drudi, Ricardo Feller
Photo by: SRO
For a change, great comeback by Raffaele Marciello with the Mercedes #88 of Akkodis-ASP with which his colleague Timur Boguslavskiy was in 19th position on the first lap and then tried to resist in the traffic. ‘Lello’ brought out all his grit and talent to make up ground, without being able to overtake Legeret in a wheel-to-wheel finish.
With the seventh place overall, Calan Williams/Niklas Krutten bring home the success in the Gold Cup Class with the #30 BMW M4 of Team WRT, keeping behind Comtoyou Racing’s category rivals, Finlay Hutchison/Gilles Magnus, who at the wheel of the The #21 Audis had also been fourth overall and class leader before slipping to ninth.
Ahead of them in eighth place is the Ferrari 296 #14 of Emil Frey Racing driven by Konsta Lappalainen/Giacomo Altoè, elbowing in the middle of the group and still being the best of the Swiss team, given that the 296 #69 of their teammates Albert Costa/Thierry Vermeulen finished 14th after a difficult start which saw the young Dutchman also end up in the grass due to a contact with Lorenzo Patrese’s Audi.
Finally, in the Top10 are Erwan Bastard/Patric Niederhauser, the best of the Audis of Saintéloc because the #27 that Christopher Mies had held earlier at the start collapsed miserably 18th once it passed into the hands of Grégoire Demoustier.
To complete the Gold Cup speech, the podium also includes the Audi #26 of Saintéloc driven by Simon Gachet/Paul Evrard. The other Audi of Boutsen VDS was also in the sand.
In the Silver Cup class, a 10″ penalty imposed on the #77 Mercedes driven by Jordan Love/Frank Bird deprived the HRT crew of victory, which then moved on to the VSR Lamborghini #119 driven by Baptiste Moulin/Marcus Paverud.
Third was the Mercedes #90 of Jesse Salmenautio/Ezequiel Perez Companc (Madpanda Motorsport), followed by the Honda #28 prepared by Nova Race for Leonardo Moncini/Jacopo Guidetti.
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