2012 FIA GT3 European Champion Dominik Baumann and his co-driver Thomas Jaeger took their maiden Blancpain Sprint Series victory at the Slovakiaring on Sunday, at the wheel of the Schubert Motorsport BMW Z4. It was a more straightforward race than Saturday’s rain-hit affair, but a first-corner incident was bad news for Grasser Racing’s championship contenders Jeroen Bleekemolen and Hari Proczyk.
Polesitter Cesar Ramos in the #1 WRT Audi had a poor getaway, and as the field bunched up going into turn one, the Brazilian appeared to hit the brakes very late, leading to multiple contact that ended the race for Proczyk’s #28 Lamborghini, Matheus Stumpf’s #30 Team Brasil BMW and Fabian Hamprecht’s #9 WRT Audi.
The incident left Nico Verdonck leading in the #84 HTP Mercedes after the first lap, with Caca Bueno second in the #0 BMW and Miguel Toril an impressive third after avoiding the first-corner melee in the #63 Fortec Mercedes.
A few laps later, Niki Mayr-Melnhof ended the #6 Phoenix Audi’s race in spectacular fashion, going straight on into the barriers at the exit of turn eight. Alex Zanardi made an unscheduled visit to the pits to deal with left-rear puncture, but the damage turned out to be more extensive than that, and he was back in to retire the car before long.
Toril’s third place didn’t last too long, and he conceded the position to Lucas Wolff in the #86 HTP Mercedes (a new entry for this round of the championship). Behind those two, Marc Basseng was on a charge in the #5 Phoenix Audi, getting past Jaeger in the Schubert BMW for fifth. Keeping a watching brief were Vincent Abril in the #4 WRT Audi and Ramos, who’d managed to keep going after his first-corner shunt, albeit with a heavily damaged driver’s-side door.
Abril didn’t offer too much resistance when his WRT team-mate went for sixth, and next in Ramos’ sights was Toril, who in the meantime had lost places to both Basseng and Jaeger. At the front of the field, Bueno had been keeping Verdonck honest, without getting too aggressive or trying any passing moves, and it wasn’t long before the pit window opened.
Verdonck was among the first to put, with the Team Brasil BMW coming in a lap later. Good pitwork by the South Americans saw Bueno’s co-driver Jimenez emerge a hair behind Verdonck’s co-driver, championship leader Max Gotz.
Meanwhile, Laurens Vanthoor ran wide at turn two in the #1 Audi shortly after taking over from Ramos. The trip through the grass left him with a blocked radiator and an overheating engine, so he had to make another trip to the pits to allow the WRT mechanics scoop the offending grass out of the car’s nose.
A slow stop for the #86 HTP Mercedes saw Alessandro Latif emerge ahead of Wolff’s co-driver Luca Stoltz after taking over the wheel of the #5 Audi from Basseng. Gotz in the other HTP car wasn’t having a great day, either, losing the lead of the race to Jimenez after running wide in the final corner.
But Baumann was the man to watch in the second half of the race, having taken over the Schubert BMW from Jaeger and emerged in fourth place. He caught and passed Gotz into the turn 10 hairpin with a little under 20 minutes of the race remaining, then set off after Jimenez. Initially, it looked like the Brazilian may have been able to hold on to score his team’s first Blancpain Sprint Series win, but Baumann caught him off guard and speared round the outside of turn six on the penultimate lap to clinch victory.
Further back, Latif lost places to Rene Rast (who’d put in a good recovery drive in the #2 WRT Audi after co-driver Enzo Ide got caught up in the first-corner incident) and Stoltz. Rast also managed to salvage a podium finish by passing Gotz on the last lap.
With Max Buhk sitting out this weekend due to disciplinary action from the German motorsport authorities following an incident in GT Masters, Gotz now leads the championship standings solo on 85 points, while Buhk remains on 69. Proczyk and Bleekemolen remain second for Grasser Lamborghini, but Proczyk’s first-corner retirment in Sunday’s race has left them trailing Gotz by 18 points going into the next round at Portimao, Portugal, in two weeks’ time.
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