Germany Beats France in Second Qualifying Race

Germany completed a clean sweep of GT Cup qualifying races for the FIA Motorsport Games at Circuit Paul Ricard by beating France to victory in race two.

After converting pole to victory on Friday evening, Fabian Schiller and Valentin Pierburg came from second on the grid on Saturday morning to win and take pole position for the main race in the process.

After fending off a challenge from Poland’s Karol Basz at the start, Schiller aimed his sights on the No. 81 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo driven by Simon Gachet.

However, France would remain ahead of Germany going into the mandatory pitstop window with Schiller pitting first to hand over to Pierburg while Gachet made way for Eric Debard.

The gap between the two drivers then closed up until Debard ran wide out of Signes, allowing the SPS Automotive Performance-run No. 20 Mercedes to slip by with seven minutes remaining on the clock.

Debard and Gachet finished second, with Basz and Marcin Jedlinski a distant third for Poland.

United Kingdom finished fourth thanks to a charging stint from Ian Loggie, who passed both Chinese Taipei and Switzerland after taking over from Sam Neary.

Switzerland rounded out the top five, while Ukraine took sixth after track limit penalties for Spain.

Sixth place changed hands a number of times in the closing minutes of the one-hour contest, which started when Ukraine’s Yevgen Sokolovskiy barged his No. 48 PROsport Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 up the inside of the No. 68 Honda NSX GT3 Evo of Max Chen at Virage du Pont.

This subsequently also allowed Spain’s Fernando Navarrete through into seventh before Sokolovskiy let the Spaniard by into turn one not much later.

However, with a five-second penalty applied to the Spanish entry at the line for track limits, the two cars switched back round in the final standings.

Chinese Taipei finished eighth, with Puerto Rico and Hong Kong completing the top ten.

The main race for the GT Cup kicks off this afternoon at 2:15 p.m. CEST (8:15 a.m. ET).