Marciello, Boguslavskiy Take Lights-to-Flag Magny Cours Win

Raffaele Marciello and Timur Boguslavskiy converted pole position to a dominant victory in the second Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Sprint Cup race of the weekend at Magny-Cours.

The No. 89 Akkodis ASP Team Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, which finished second in Saturday’s race, started Sunday afternoon’s one-hour contest from pole, with Marciello quick to open up an advantage during his stint in the first half of the race.

The Swiss driver then pitted to hand over to co-driver Boguslavskiy, who maintained the gap to the sister No. 88 Mercedes of Jim Pla and Maximilian Goetz and took the checkered flag with a gap of over ten seconds.

Goetz and Pla finished third on the road behind the No. 33 Team WRT Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II of Christopher Mies and Jean-Baptiste Simmenauer.

Mies started fifth, moved up to third by the start and was second by the time the pitstop started after overtaking Goetz.

Simmenauer remained ahead of Pla for the second half of the race, but the Audi was given a ten-second penalty for an unsafe release during its pitstop.

Similarly, the No. 25 Sainteloc Audi of Patric Niederhauser and Aurelien Panis was given a five-second penalty for causing a collision with Goetz earlier in the race but retained third place.

That was because it had built up a big enough gap to the No. 53 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020 of Ulysse de Pauw and Pierre Alexandre Jean, which finished fifth and took Silver-class victory in the process.

The No. 33 Audi was classified fourth after their penalty was applied.

De Pauw himself was involved in a lap one scrap with the No. 32 Team WRT Audi at the opening lap, which resulted in Dries Vanthoor skipping across the gravel on the exit of turn one.

Vanthoor and Charles Weerts recovered to finish sixth, with the No. 66 Attempto Racing Audi of Pieter Schothorst and Dennis Marschall seventh ahead of the No. 12 Tresor by Car Collection pairing of Mattia Drudi and Luca Ghiotto.

Nicolas Schoell and Alex Aka finished ninth overall and second in the Silver-class for Attempto Racing, with the No. 54 Dinamic Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R of Adrien de Leener and Christian Engelhart completing the top ten.

RESULTS: Race 2