Porsche beat Lamborghini and Aston Martin to the first win of the season at Circuit Paul Ricard, in a GT Cup Open Europe season-opener that had a strong Polish taste, won in style by Maciej Blazek and Mateusz Lisowski.
The duo of A&P Racing Team PTT Tech Support beat country fellow Andrzej Lewandowski (VSR Lamborghini), who took the honours in the Am category. Blazek and Lisowski made a perfect race, with the former keeping contact with the leader in the first stint, Dino Zamparelli (E2P Porsche), and the latter putting pressure on the leader after the pit stop, the Q1 Trackracing Porsche of Maciej Darmenko, who eventually finished fourth after teammate Artur Janosz concluded his stint in second.
The ProSport Aston Martin of Belgian duo Rodrigue Gillion-Nico Verdonck took third overall and put a third different brand on the podium, while Glauco Solieri (AKM Lambo) and Fernando Fortes (Three Sixty Porsche) completed the podium in Am.
THE RACE – At the start, Zamparelli keeps the advantage narrowly ahead of Janosz, who tries a couple of moves during first lap, but without success.
Blazek is third ahead of Lewandowski, soon threatened by Navarrete jr, who has passed Pisani and looks particularly fast and in fighting spirit. The Spaniard will eventually get past in lap 4. Gillion and Estragués follow.
Navarrete continues to put the show and by lap 6 he has passed Blazek as well to take third while Pisani has catch Lewandowski and starts a duel for fifth. End of lap 10, the driver change window opens, with the drivers racing alone being among the first one to pit. On the contrary, Zamparelli and Janosz stay as long as possible, the leaders being now separated by 6 seconds.
After all changes, Darmetko leads ahead of Lisowski, but he goes into a spin in lap 13 leaving P1 to the A&P Racing car, which will have no trouble up to the chequered flag and victory. Lewandowski will take second ahead, Verdonck, Darmetko, who has recovered to fourth, and Solieri, while Navarrete sr had to stop in the pits to serve a drive-through for speeding in the pitlane.
