Marciello Takes Incident-Filled Qualification Race Win

Photo: Macau Grand Prix Organizing Committee

Raffaele Marciello led a lights-to-flag victory in Saturday’s Qualification Race for the FIA GT World Cup in Macau, in a 1-2 finish for Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo machinery.

Marciello, in the Landgraf Motorsport-prepared Mercedes-AMG finished 1.172 seconds ahead Craft-Bamboo Racing’s Maro Engel at the end of an incident-filled 12-lap contest around the Guia Circuit.

Having started on pole, the Swiss-flagged driver stretched into an early lead after Engel got around Edoardo Mortara, who started second in the No. 40 Absolute Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II.

Simultaneous accidents for Matteo Cairoli and Thomas Preining brought out the first safety car on the opening lap, with both Porsche 911 GT3 R entries eliminated from the race.

While Marciello pulled away on the Lap 4 restart, a heavy crash by Adderly Fong in the Hello Kitty-liveried No. 50 Uno Racing Team Audi three laps later brought out a red flag due to barrier repairs and track cleanup.

The 23-minute stoppage resulted in a two-lap shootout to the finish, with no major changes in the finishing order.

Mortara completed the podium in third ahead of Augusto Farfus in the No. 11 ROWE Racing BMW M4 GT3 and Macau rookie Sheldon van der Linde completing the top-five in the Team WRT BMW.

Daniel Serra was sixth, followed by Laurens Vanthoor, Christopher Haase and Dani Juncadella, who had a coming together with the wall on the first restart that dropped the Spaniard from fourth to ninth.

Earl Bamber, meanwhile, rounded out the top-ten in his EBM-prepared Porsche.

Seventeen of the 20 entires finished the race, which ran to nearly one hour due to the red flag stoppage.

The FIA GT World Cup, with the grid based on Saturday’s Qualification Race results, gets underway Sunday at 12:05 p.m. local time (Saturday, 11:05 p.m. ET) with live coverage on the FIA’s YouTube page.

RESULTS: Qualification Race

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John