While AF Corse and ASP take the wins in the GTWC Europe at Brands Hatch, WRT are struggling – Rossi has found a weak spot in himself
Valentino Rossi scored his first points in the GT World Challenge (GTWC) Europe last weekend. The former MotoGP legend finished 13th and eighth in the two one-hour races at the Brands Hatch circuit in Kent. In doing so, he scored his first GTWC points in Race 2 together with Frederic Vervisch in the 46 WRT Audi.
In the first race (result!), the nine-time motorbike world champion, starting from 17th on the grid, narrowly avoided a four-car collision that took two of his teammates out of the race. However, he was unable to hold on to the 14th place he had thus gained; he lost one position to Oliver Wilkinson in the 38 Jota-McLaren (Wilkinson/Bell), which had spectacularly crashed into the forest a year earlier.
Rossi passed in 15th position to Vervisch, who saw the track again in 13th. He also finished in that position, thus missing out on the points.
Vervisch started the second race (result!) from tenth on the grid. The Belgian held this for the first part of the race and handed over to Rossi. Thanks to quick pit work by the crew, the WRT Audi 46 made up two places again. Rossi drove home in eighth position.
The Italian knows exactly what he still has to work on: “In testing, you can focus on pushing the car [slowly] to the limit. On a race weekend, and especially in the race, it’s different. You don’t have five laps to settle in. You have to go out there and, bang, get your fastest possible lap.”
That’s not so easy when you have a lot of cars around you, the 43-year-old continued. “For me, there is still the big difference to the good drivers in this point. I still have to work on that. “
Rossi’s pace increased as he came under pressure from Thomas Drouet in the 87 ASP Mercedes (Drouet/Stevenson). He increased his pace and set several laps in the 1:23 range in the closing stages. This was also where the times of the top drivers were. He kept Drouet behind him by 0.7 seconds. That was wastepaper because the ASP-Mercedes still received a time penalty that threw him out of the points.
“I was able to improve my lap times, especially at the end of the race when I felt more comfortable in the car and on the track. I really enjoyed that,” Rossi said of the final stages of the second race.
The lap times in qualifying and the race show what Rossi means: he takes too long to get up to speed. In the short qualifying sessions, where the tyre only peaks for one or two laps, he clearly misses Vervisch’s times. In the race, he comes close to the Belgian.
In qualifying, Vervisch was over three quarters of a second faster than the “doctor” (1:22.956 to 1:22.173 minutes). In the second race Vervisch’s fastest lap was 1:23.704, Rossi’s 1:23.852 minutes. Data is missing from Race 1 as GTWC Europe has not made the relevant timesheet available.
First Ferrari win in Sprint Cup since 2015
The wins went to the respective pole setters with start-finish victories on the time-honoured track in Great Britain. Thus, in the first race, Ulysse de Pauw and Pierre Alexandre Jean ensured the first Ferrari victory in the Sprint Cup for almost seven years – back then, Norbert Siedler and Marco Seefried triumphed in a Ferrari 458 GT3 at Misano.
Second place went to the WRT Audi 89 (Boguslawski/Marciello).
The second race was a clear affair for Timur Boguslawski and Raffaele Marciello in the ASP-Mercedes. Second place again went to Vanthoor and Weerts, who were the benchmark within WRT. Third place went to the ASP-Mercedes 88 (Gounon/Pla). The latter made up for a podium finish, as the duo was initially in second place in the first race, then dropped to P4 at the pit stop.
The next race of the GTWC Europe is again a sprint weekend. From 13 to 15 May, the third weekend of the season will be held at the former Formula 1 circuit of Magny-Cours.
