After Saturday’s
near miss in the Qualifying Race at Nürburgring, Garage 59 and
McLaren finally proved their superiority in the Blancpain
GT Series, with the duo formed by Rob
Bell and Alvaro Parente in the No.58 car practically having no
problems to see the checkered flag first.
Rob Bell
just had to pick up from where he left off Saturday, as the No. 58
Garage 59 McLaren
easily overtook the No. 33 WRT Audi,
leaving almost the whole WRT fleet to hold the No. 86 HTP
Mercedes and the NO. 99 ROWE
BMW. While the Audis No. 33 and 28
tried to play their tactics to get the leader, the No. 4 car was
holding most of the field.
Soon the No. 99 ROWE
BMW was left behind in sixth place and Alexander Sims saw himself in
the middle of a 4-way battle, being passed by the No. 333 Rinaldi
Racing Ferrari and then becoming the
target of the No. 84 HTP Mercedes and the No. 98 ROWE BMW.
With clean air at
his disposal, Jules Szymkowiak got quicker and quicker, enough to
start his attack to the WRT fleet, starting with the No. 4 Audi with
Nico Müller behind the wheel, who quickly became a victim and saw
the Mercedes AMG GT3 go past him. Then it was Enzo Ide the next
victim of Szymkowiak’s ability, being left behind one they went out
of the hairpin.
Things weren’t
going well for WRT as the Frederic
Vervisch tried to deal with the ROWE
Racing pair of cars, only to be denied of the overtake, go out of the
track and almost hit the No. 3 car.
Almost all
frontrunners made their pit stops early in the window, while Will
Stevens in the No. 28 WRT Audi tried to
pull a sequence of fast laps to at least be able to fight for the
lead once returning from the pitlane, but Alvaro
Parente proved that Stevens’ strategy
wouldn’t leave René Rast
in front, retaining his lead with a reasonable gap.
During the final 20
minutes of racing, Parente just had to keep a certain distance from
Rast, and after 10 minutes Rast lost track of the lead battle as the
gap extended from one to two seconds, and then the Portuguese driver
was able to manage his way with some ease to the finish line. The No.
19 GRT Lamborghini conquered the Silver Cup class, while Ferrari
squads Kessel Racing and AF Corse won the Pro-Am and Am classes.
All the attentions
from now on concentrate in the most important event of the Blancpain
GT calendar, the TOTAL 24 Hours of Spa,
with the Test Day being on July 5th,
and the race itself being held on July 30th-31st.
PHOTO: Garage 59
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