Mirko Bortolotti and Christian
Engelhardt were simply unstoppable in the No. 63 GRT
Lamborghini, and they challenged the close conventions of short
racing in GT3 by winning the Main Race of the Blancpain GT
Sprint Cup at Brands Hatch for a huge margin of more than 20
seconds.
Once the race was on the No. 63 GRT
Lamborghini secured first place while the sister No. 19 car settled
for second, and to worsen things for the ROWE Racing side, the No. 98
was third and the No. 99 lost fourth place to the No. 88 AKKA-ASP
Mercedes. While that the No. 75 ISR Audi was sent to a
spin and stayed stuck in the gravel trap. A stopped car in the
outside of a corner isn't exactly secure, so the Safety Car was
called to track with just three minutes of racing.
12 minutes into the race and the
restart came and the No. 63 GRT car opened the gap as the No. 19
acted as the shield. With so many cars bunched up, Felix Serralles
brought the No. 88 car to third, and while the ROWE BMWs were side by
side, Ben Barnicoat in the No. 58 Strakka McLaren was glued
into their backs waiting for an opportunity to pass, and this came
two laps later as he passed the No. 99 ROWE BMW for fifth place.
Once the pit window opened most of the
leaders were in, and Grässer Racing's shielding ended as the No. 19
car stalled when was ready to leave the pitlane due to a broken
driveshaft. Another car of the leading that was eliminated was the
No. 99 ROWE BMW due to contact which stopped them just past the pits.
When pit window closed the No. 63 was without shielding, but the
messed up events in the middle of the field brought a gap of 20
seconds to the No. 17 WRT Audi.
With the first two cars simply too
distant to see any moves happen, the action was seen from the third
place as Will Stevens in the No. 2 WRT Audi was holding a
considerable group behind him, with the No. 85 HTP Mercedes
immediately behind while the No. 98 ROWE BMW, the No. 5 WRT Audi and
the No. 84 HTP Mercedes some meters back, but the nature of the
circuit simply didn't let anything happen, specially with HTP opting
for the championship instead of in-race progress.
The No. 85 HTP Mercedes took the
Silver Cup win and the No. 333 Rinaldi Ferrari completed the
Brands Hatch sweep in the Pro-Am Cup with another win.
Mirko Bortolotti and Christian
Engelhardt lead the Blancpain GT Series with 61 points against 56 of
Maximilian Buhk and Franck Perera, while their places in the
Blancpain GT Sprint Cup standings are reversed, as Buhk and Perera
lead with 41 points while Bortolotti and Engelardt have 36 points.
Next meeting will be on May 14th
at Silverstone for the Blancpain GT Endurance, while Sprint Cup
returns only on June 4th at Zolder, Belgium.
PHOTO: Blancpain GT Series
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