Charles Weerts and Dries Vanthoor have scored the victory in the first race of the GTWC Europe in Misano and strengthen their Sprint Cup leadership with the #32 Audi. The Team WRT duo has clearly prevailed over their main rivals in a race that they have dominated at all times. Timur Boguslavskiy and Raffaele Marciello have minimized damage with the #89 Mercedes after climbing to second position. The podium was completed by the #30 Audi, thus closing WRT’s double on the podium. Also, Thomas Neubauer and Benjamin Goethe have scored the victory in the Silver Cup.
Weerts did not fail and kept the #32 Audi ahead of the #112 McLaren at the start. Despite his attempts, Timur Boguslavskiy was unable to take second place from Vincent Abril. If there were changes behind the #89 Mercedes, since Pierre-Alexandre Jean managed to climb to fourth place. Any subsequent attack attempt was extinguished with the appearance of the Safety Car due to the contact between Mercedes #93 from Tempesta to Aurélien Panis. Frenchman Hugo Delacour could not dodge the #25 Audi and hit the #21 Ferrari squarely.. Alex Aka also damaged his car.
There were no changes at the start and Weerts once again prevailed over Abril and Boguslavskiy to lead the race, now with ten minutes already discounted. Despite the contact between the McLaren #111 and the Lamborghini #18, the race could continue normally, what it was worth to Charles Weerts to stretch his advantage at the head of the race above 3.5 seconds at the end of the first third of the race. The small touches at the rear of the group did not alter the development of the race until the opening of the pit stop window.
The advantage gained by Charles Weerts allowed the passage of the #32 Audi through the pits to be very calm. Dries Vanthoor returned to the track in the lead, maintaining a five-second lead over the #89 Mercedes, since the Akkodis-ASP team got second place for Raffaele Marciello, more because of the disastrous stop of JP Motorsport with the #112 McLaren than on its own merit. Be that as it may, the two GT3 fighting for the title went on to occupy the first two positions ahead of the #30, #11, #66 and #33 Audis. The #53 Ferrari fell to seventh position, just ahead of the #112.
Valentino Rossi suffered an unfortunate puncture just before his pit stop, a mishap that made him lose a lot of time. This incident was one of the few that occurred in the second half of the race, which allowed Dries Vanthoor to manage his advantage with great comfort, although always with the risk of the appearance of a Safety Car that could end their advantage. There was no neutralization and Dries Vanthoor secured victory for the #32 Audi with a 5.6 second lead over the #89 Mercedes.
Benjamin Goethe crossed the finish line in third position with the Audi #30 to achieve a hard-fought podium, as Christopher Mies put pressure on the Danish driver until the last corner. For its part, the Audi #66 completed a magnificent comeback to close the ‘top 5’ of the race ahead of the Audi #33 and the Audi #26, second classified in the Silver Cup by beating the Ferrari #53 of AF Corse. On the other hand, it should be noted that Albert Costa finished 13th after joining Imperiale Racing’s #663 Lamborghini line-up.
Results race I GTWC Europe 2022 in Misano