From last to first: Lorenzo Bontempelli and Diego Di Fabio took a resounding maiden GT Cup Europe at home in Monza, in the last race of the season, putting back a Ferrari on the top of the podium. Their and EasyRace’s first appearance in the series ended with a success that should have arrived yesterday, as the white 488 Challenge was bound to victory before a technical problem stopped it in the last laps.
Today, the former GTS Champion in the GT Open and his young teammate had a trouble-free race but had the challenge to climb up from the last position as the team struggled to put the car back in order. The pair beat the FAEMS Porsche of Matteo Luvisi and Lodovico Laurini and the ZRS Motorsport car of freshly-crowned vice champions Pietro Armanni and Ludovico Longoni, in an all-Italian podium.
Bontempelli and Di Fabio also netted the Pro-Am success ahead of another debuting pair, Rene Povlsen-Mike Halder (Halder Motorsport), and the class new champions Laura van den Hengel-Paul Meijer (Burgers Motorsport by HWM).
Italian drivers also dominated the Am class, with Gianluca Giorgi winning in the Ebimotors car ahead of Giacomo Giubergia (Ebimotors) and the Q1 Trackracing pair of Nathan Brauns-Nicolas Vandierendonck. FAEMS Team took the Teams’ title in their first season in the series.
THE RACE – Fabio Babini was sitting in pole for the last race, but braking at the first chicane was a bit chaotic, with Cazzaniga going straight and Armanni taking the lead over Babini, Rodriguez, Luvisi, Cazzaniga, Fernandes (later penalized with 5 seconds for a contact), Pisani, Brauns, and Saelens. Rodriguez took second from Babini, but not much else happened until lap 9, when Velasco crashed the Aggressive Lambo at the exit of the chicane, prompting the exit of the safety car and a delay in the opening of the pit stop window.
The pit stop phase was perfectly managed by the EasyRace team, which found itself leading after all driver changes were made, with Di Fabio managing to keep up to the flag a one-second gap on Laurini and Longoni, busy in a spectacular fight between them, with the new champion Franca narrowly out of the podium.