Race 1
The battle for the GT Open remained well alight on Saturday, as the two top contenders took first and second on a very warm afternoon in Race 1 at the Circuit de Barcelona Catalunya.
Championship leader Levente Révész claimed his fourth win of the season, the third together with Maxi Götz, in the Motopark Mercedes, right ahead of direct rivals, Simon Reicher and Christopher Haase in the Eastalent Racing Audi.
Révész extended his title advantage to six points.
Third in the race were Anthony Bartone and Fabian Schiller, in the GetSpeed Mercedes.
In Pro-Am, Dexter Müller and Yannick Mettler took a well-deserved first win of the season in the SPS Mercedes while Valentin Pierburg and Dominik Baumann, by finishing second, become the new class leaders by one point over GetSpeed teammates Steve Jans-Aaron Walker.
In Am, it was a superb maiden win for Attila Zsigo and Dennis Waszek, in the Racing Trevor BMW, while there is a tie again at the top of the class standings between Gino Forgione-Michele Rugolo (AF Corse Ferrari) and Mark Sansom (Garage 59 McLaren), today 4th and 3rd, respectively.
In his second outing in the series, Josh Rattican (Greystone GT McLaren) took pole. The young Brit kept the advantage at the start, ahead of Götz, Schiller, Mettler, Kell, Bennett, Reicher, Porter, Petrov and Walker, but the race was eventful from even before the start, as Rogalski lost a wheel and Lebbon was hit by mechanical failure on the formation lap!
On the first racing lap, there were two separate incidents at the back, between Sansom and Naran, and between Hernandez and Gissurarson. The safety car was out from lap 2 to 5.
After the restart, Rattican led by 1.5 seconds from Götz, then Schiller, Mettler, Kell, Kell, Bennett, Reicher, Buurman, Porter and Petrov. Positions did not change much and margins remained tight.
When reaching the opening of the pit stop window in lap 15, Rattican’s advantage was barely two seconds, with Schiller, Mettler, Kell, Buurman and Reicher covered by less than ten seconds. Korzeniowski had led the Am class from the start.
After all stops were completed, Révész led, with a 3-second gap on Kelly, 6 on Bartone and 10 on Haase.
Müller, Meakin, Mosca and Simonazzi followed , while in Am Zsigo was first.
While Révész kept control to the flag. Haase would finish second after passing Bartone and then Kell, with the American stealing P3 from the Brit on the closing lap. Meakin and Mosca completed the top 6. Müller won in Pro-Am ahead of Baumann and Jans and Zsigo took Am beating Naran and Hollings.
There were also more incidents, as Salaquarda hit Simonazzi on lap 31, sending him into a spin.
On the last lap, Stanley rammed Babini, getting a post-race 5-second penalty.
