Cold, misty but nonetheless dry conditions prevailed for this morning’s 20-minute warm-up session ahead of the afternoon’s Blancpain Sprint Series Championship Race at Nogaro.
Yesterday’s race winners Laurens Vanthoor and Cesar Ramos were ominously quick, putting the #1 WRT Audi at the top of the timesheets with a lap of 1:27.163. Daniel Lloyd put the #61 Bhai Tech McLaren second, just a tenth of a second behind, while third fastest were Max Buhk and Maxi Gotz in the #84 HTP Mercedes, who managed a 1:27.549.
The HTP cars finished fifth and sixth yesterday and driver of the #85 Stef Dusseldorp felt that was the best result possible under the circumstances. “We did a good job yesterday and we’ll target a strong points finish again,” he told us. “On pure speed, we have no chance, so we just have to hope that something unusual happes in the race.” After the 20-minute warm-up session, Dusseldorp and Sergei Afanasiev’s car was fourth-fastest, lapping in 1:28.164.
Young Pole Mateusz Lisowksi had a successful debut GT3 race yesterday, bringing the #4 WRT Audi home xth overall with Vincent Abril, and also taking the Silver Cup win. “I was surprised to miss out on the top 10 in qualifying yesterday, but we were only a tenth of a second off,” he said. “The weather was pretty bad, but we had good pace in the race.” Lisowski currently plans to contest every round of the Sprint Series, but budget constraints are keeping him out of endurance events for now. “My goal would be to do sprint and endurance races next year. It’s tough, because I’m up against guys with many years of experience in GT3 cars.” The #4 Audi was sixth-fastest in the warm-up, with a time of 1:28.347.
Alex Zanardi had an action-packed qualifying race yesterday, managing to regain several positions after running wide at the start. “I said before that it’s quite hard to overtake here, but still I was able to move forward,” he smiled. “It looks like we’ve found something in the setup this morning that makes me more confident for the main race, but this weekend is still more about experience in the car than results.” The Italian’s new-found confidence in the car was borne out with the seventh-fastest lap time this morning.
The #5 Phoenix Audi finished on the podium yesterday (and was promoted from third to second when the #2 WRT was disqualified), but Marc Basseng in the #6 was less happy with how his race panned out. “I had a set of wets from last year, and they were so shit,” he explained. “I was really slow at the start. It took nearly the whole stint to get them working, so the last four or five laps weren’t too bad.”
Basseng is paired up with 18-year-old Alessandro Latif in the Sprint Series this season, and the young London-based driver has already made his mark with drives for Flying Lizard Motorsports at Daytona and Sebring. “He’s done a very good job up to now,” says Basseng. “It’s been a difficult weekend for his GT3 debut, with dry practice sessions, then rain in the first race. But he kept the car on the track and brought it home. He’ll take the start today and hopefully it stays dry. We had the quickest pitstop yesterday, so we might be able to do something, but I don’t think we can catch WRT.” DSC will have a full interview with Alessandro Latif in the coming days.
Andrea Montermini and Filip Salaquarda finished eigth in their Villorba Corse Ferrari – a bit of a comedown for the Italian veteran, who became accustomed to dominating races in GT Open last year. However, he remains characteristically upbeat: “We have work to do,” he declared. “It was a very quick turnaround for the team after the Endurance race at Monza last week. The car was okay in the wet, maybe it won’t be so good in the dry, but we know the areas where we need to improve,” he added.
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