Scott Hargrove made it two wins in two races to start the Pirelli World Challenge GT season, winning today’s weekend-ending race at St. Pete in the Pfaff Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R, which was red flagged with 10 minutes to go because of a huge incident involving K-PAX Racing’s Alvaro Parente.
Parente was “ok” after the incident, and walked away from his Bentley Continental GT3 following the impact, which occurred at Turn 10. The Portuguese driver went full speed, head on into the tyre wall at the Turn 10 escape road, after what appeared to be a brake failure.
The impact ended with his car sitting vertically up the wall. It book-ended a miserable weekend for the former champion, Parente retiring from Race 1 too, after an incident at Turn 1 at the start.
Hargrove went almost entirely unchallenged in the second race by the chasing drivers, the Canadian soaking up the pressure from behind at the start, and during the subsequent restarts.
There wasn’t much green flag running in the race, due to two other incidents prior to Parente’s off.
Toni Vilander made an uncharacteristic mistake at Turn 3, 18 minutes into the race, the Finn brushing the inside wall, sending him and his R. Ferri Ferrari 488 GT3 off into the concrete on the outside at the exit of the corner. The damage forced him to retire on the spot.
Then when the race restarted with 10 minutes to go, Spencer Pumpelly, who like Parente, failed to finish Race 1, made a similar error at Turn 3. The TRG driver’s Aston Martin also ended up in the outside wall on the exit, ripping off the Vantage’s rear wing. Pumpelly retired the car in the escape road at Turn 4, but the Safety Car had to be called again to allow marshals to clean the circuit.
Finishing second in the end was Daniel Keilwitz in the Callaway Competition Corvette C7 GT3-R. The German slipped to third at the start, and eventually had to fight his way back past Daniel Morad’s CRP Racing Mercedes just before Vilander’s incident to retake his position.
Morad finished third, ahead of Michael Christensen’s Alegra Motorsport Porsche, which was promoted to fourth after Vilander’s off.
Martin Fuentes rounded out the top five, and consequently won the GTA class in his Ferrari 488 GT3. Once again, he beat out Rodrigo Baptista’s K-PAX Bentley – which finished second in class – and Parker Chase’s Audi, which came home third.
The PWC season resumes later this month, when the teams travel to Texas to race at Circuit of The Americas on March 23-25.
