In its first visit to Misano, the GT Cup Europe lived a lively Race 1 today, which ended with Italian teams taking the honours. The ZRS Motorsport Porsche clinched its first win of the season, with Ludovico Longoni and Simone Iaquinta. They beat Pietro Delli Guanti and Matteo Luvisi, in the FAMS Team by Ebimotors Porsche, who reduced to 3 points their gap in the overall standings, relaunching the title race, as championship leaders Jurriaan De Back and Paul Meijer (HWM Motorsport) could not finish better than sixth.
In the return of Ferraris 296 Challenge to the grid, the Pracing Horse had a good day, with Marco Zanasi and Andrea Belicchi taking third overall and the win in Pro-Am in the Zanasi Racing purple car. Second were, after a great final charge, returnees Davide Scannicchio and Fabio Babini, in one of the Tsunami RT cars, with Alejandro Barambio-Borja García (GT Corse) taking third and keeping a firm lead in the class standings.
In Am, it was a day of revenge for the double reigning champions Leandro Martins and Dieter Svepes, as the LMR Motorsport pair could finally live a trouble-free day to take their first success of the year, ahead of Evgenii Leonov (Volcano Motorsport), beaten only in the final laps of the race, and the Spanish pair of Tsunami RT, Fernando Navarrete-Fernando Pedrera.
THE RACE- Simone Iaquinta took pole in the morning and kept control at the start ahead of Delli Guanti, García and Laurini, but an incident involving the latter provoked a safety car intervention at the end of lap 1, as the BiRace Porsche lost a rear wheel in the last corner before the straight.
Iaquinta maintained a small gap (less than two seconds) throughout the first stint, with García, De Back, Martinelli, Zanasi, and de Mello (first in Am) behind them. After all stops, Longoni maintained the lead, his 13-second margin being only slowly eroded by Matteo Luvisi despite all his efforts. At the end, 7 seconds separated the two cars.
Pedrini was third most of the second stint before being passed by Belicchi, with Meijer finishing sixth ahead of two drivers making a very strong comeback, Babini and Svepes, who passed Leonov in the final stages to take the Am win. The GDL Porsche of Giubergia and the Target Racing Ferrari of Alessandri were the latest casualties to be reported.
