Marciello, Boguslavskiy Rebound for Race 2 Victory

Raffaele Marciello and Timur Boguslavskiy rebounded from their Saturday retirement to win the second Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Sprint Cup race of the weekend at Hockenheim.

Boguslavskiy brought the No. 88 Akkodis ASP Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo past the checkered flag with seven seconds in hand to Lucas Legeret, who shared the No. 11 Comtoyou Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II with Christopher Haase.

The points-leading Akkodis ASP duo controlled Sunday’s 60-minute encounter after Marciello overtook Audi drivers Mattia Drudi and Patric Niederhauser on either side of an early safety car period that was caused by a three-car incident further back in the field.

Drudi started from pole position and maintained his lead, but the Tresor Orange 1 driver was handed a five-second penalty to serve at his pit stop for jumping the start.

Marciello partly benefited from the Italian’s hasty getaway by powering past Niederhauser, whose Sainteloc Junior Team Audi started on the front row of the grid.

After the 10-minute safety car, Marciello sized up Drudi at the hairpin before launching a successful attack a few corners later upon entry to the stadium section.

Marciello was around 2.5 seconds ahead of Drudi when the pit window opened at 25 minutes, but the gap increased to seven seconds as the Audi underwent its penalty.

Drudi’s co-driver Ricardo Feller dropped to sixth as a result, while Comtoyou Racing performed a quick driver change to bring Legeret out in second after Haase ran sixth during the opening stint.

Despite needing to manage some gear-shifting issues, Boguslavskiy kept Legeret out of reach to deliver his and Marciello’s third victory of the Sprint Cup season.

Erwan Bastard brought the No. 25 Sainteloc Audi home in third, securing his and Niederhauser’s first podium together this year.

After Drudi’s penalty, Feller made up two positions during the second stint to take fourth in the Attempto-run Audi that won on Saturday.

The Swiss ace powered past Valentino Rossi’s Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 exiting the final corner with 20 minutes to go before undercutting the Italian’s teammate Charles Weerts out of Turn 8 with six minutes left on the clock.

Weerts then came under pressure from Albert Costa in the closing laps, repeating a battle that their co-drivers had at the end of Race 1, but the three-time Sprint Cup champion kept the Emil Frey Racing Ferrari driver at bay by three-tenths.

Rossi finished seventh after a strong opening from Maxime Martin, who climbed to third before the No. 46 crew lost two positions during the pit sequence.

Christian Engelhart and Adrien de Leener ended up eighth for the Dinamic GT Porsche squad, beating the VSR Lamborghini duo of Jordan Pepper and Franck Perera.

Aurelien Panis and Alberto di Folco completed the top 10 after dominating the Gold Cup class in their No. 9 Boutsen VDS Audi.

Silver Cup honors went to Attempto Racing’s Lorenzo Patrese and Alex Aka who bounced back from a retirement in Race 1 to take their third category win of the campaign.

Their victory came after Paul Motorsport’s Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 retired from the lead with smoke emanating from the car.

Sebastien Baud brought home the Bronze Cup win for the No. 79 Haupt Racing Mercedes-AMG that was started by Hubert Haupt.

RESULTS: Race 2