Dani Juncadella continues to add success to his dream season after winning the Indianapolis 8 Hours alongside Raffaele Marciello and Daniel Morad in the #77 Mercedes. The Spanish driver is the new leader of the Intercontinental GT Challenge.
Dani Juncadella, Raffaele Marciello and Daniel Morad have scored the victory in the 8 Hours of Indianapolis with the #77 Craft-Bamboo Mercedes. With this victory in the third round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge (IGTC), the Spanish driver is positioned as the new leader of the series. In a race against in its first half and fighting in the final stretch, the #77 has been imposed on the Ferrari #71 of Daniel Serra, Ulysse de Pauw and Antonio Fuoco.
Despite the final victory, The weekend did not start on the right foot for Dani Juncadella and your team. A red flag during Q1 prevented the #77 Mercedes from setting a time, leaving the Spaniard’s car at the back of the grid with no chance of competing in the shootout for pole position. A situation that also affected the Ferrari #71not so Jules Gounon’s Mercedes, the Spaniard’s great rival in the fight for the IGTC after being teammates until now.
Dani Juncadella has been placed as the new leader of the IGTC, while Mercedes-AMG is already champion by brands
During the first hour, Marco Mapelli took the lead in the K-PAX Racing Lamborghini ahead of the #71 Ferrari, after a great comeback by Daniel Serra that took the Italian GT3 from 18th to second place. More problems had to progress the Mercedes #77, although soon the trend turned around. In fact, Dani Juncadella came to the forefront of the race at the halfway point of the raceamong other things for the dramatic performance of Ferrari.
In an inexplicable movement, the #71 and #51 Ferraris touched at turn 1, which resulted in a penalty for the #71 of Ulysse de Pauw. Penalty that made AF Corse’s GT3 lose the half-minute rent it had as event leader. This circumstance placed Dani with the Mercedes #77 as the leader with a lead of 22 seconds on the #71 and with Jules Gounon’s #33 Mercedes in third position.
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change of third
With a different strategy derived from the sanction to #71, Juncadella’s GT3 and the Ferrari ended up meeting on the track. In fact, Antonio Fuoco overtook Raffaele Marciello with two hours to go in traffic. from that moment there was an exchange of positions between #77 and #71 from the different moments of your stops and the traffic on the track.
Nevertheless, Raffaele Marciello managed to win the game against Antonio Fuoco in the final stretch to prevail with a narrow margin of 0.8 seconds. In this way, the Juncadella GT3 achieved a valuable victory that placed it at the head of the championship general. For its part, the podium was completed by the Mercedes #33 of Winward Racing within the IGTC, although very far from the two cars that have starred in the second half of the race.
the other winners
Two laps behind the leaders and behind the #51 Ferrari, Sun Energy1 Racing’s #75 Mercedes took fifth position, also achieving victory in the Pro-Am category. The effort of Kenny Habul, Martin Konrad and Dominik Baumann was the finishing touch for the German brand, since Mercedes-AMG secured the IGTC constructors’ title one run in advance.
It should be noted that Turner Motorsport’s BMW #96 has taken victory in the GT World Challenge America by achieving the third absolute position in the race, even ahead of the #33 Mercedes that has completed the podium within the IGTC by being registered in both categories, but that has been second in the American contest. The podium in the regional series has been completed by the #94 BMW.
Photos: Intercontinental GT Challenge