Rossi Claims Breakthrough Sprint Cup Victory at Misano

Valentino Rossi claimed a breakthrough maiden Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS win alongside his Team WRT co-driver Maxime Martin in the second Sprint Cup race at Misano.

The former MotoGP star put together a clean and consistent second stint to bring the No. 46 BMW M4 GT3 across the line 4.2 seconds ahead of Lucas Legeret in the second-placed Comtoyou Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II.

It marked Rossi’s first victory in SRO Motorsports Group competition, off the back of his recent GT3 class win at the Road to Le Mans.

The victory was also WRT’s first in GTWC Europe since it switched from Audi to BMW this year.

Martin started Sunday’s 60-minute race from third on the 42-car grid, running behind Sainteloc Junior Team Audi driver Patric Niederhauser and pole-sitter Dries Vanthoor during the opening stint.

Vanthoor’s ability to grow a lead in the No. 32 WRT BMW was curtailed by a Full Course Yellow and safety car period, which bunched up the field just before the pit window.

The interruption was caused by an accident for the Boutsen VDS Audi of Alberto di Folco, which hit the tire barriers after ricocheting between two other Audis during a four-wide battle into Quercia corner.

The safety car resulted in a one-minute delay to the pit window opening, at which point WRT brought Vanthoor and Martin in for driver and tire changes.

A slow pit stop, partly caused by a stuck wheel, caused the No. 32 BMW to lose the net lead while Rossi took over the No. 46 car without trouble.

Niederhauser stayed out until later in the window before handing over to Erwan Bastard, who slotted into third behind Legeret’s Comtotyou Racing Audi which ran fourth in the opening stint with Christopher Haase at the wheel.

Rossi was around four seconds ahead of Legeret and produced a strong drive to keep the Frenchman out of range and deliver a popular victory in front of a home crowd.

A fast pit stop from the WRT mechanics enabled the No. 31 BMW to rise from eighth to third and Jean-Baptiste Simmenauer maintained the podium position, scoring his and Thomas Neubauer’s first points result of the season.

The Akkodis ASP pairing of Raffaele Marciello and Timur Boguslavskiy left Misano as the Sprint Cup championship leaders after finishing fifth in Race 2, off the back of their victory on Saturday.

Boguslavskiy started from 11th on the grid and Marciello was only ninth after the pit stops, but the Swiss-Italian ace made four overtakes in the No. 88 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo including a braking move on Giacomo Altoe at Turn 14 with three minutes to go.

Marciello then gained another position when the No. 69 Emil Frey Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 had five seconds added on at the end for exceeding track limits four times.

That put Albert Costa and Thierry Vermeulen in fifth, one place ahead of their Emil Frey teammates Altoe and Konsta Lappalainen.

Bastard and Niederhauser settled for seventh, with Jordan Pepper and Franck Perera finishing eight in the No. 60 VSR Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2.

Vanthoor and Charles Weerts only managed ninth after starting from pole, while fellow Sprint Cup title hopefuls Ricardo Feller and Mattia Drudi retired.

Gold Cup honors went to the WRT duo of Niklas Kruetten and Calan Williams, who came through one overall position in front of the Silver Cup-winning Tresor Attempto Racing Audi of Alex Aka and Lorenzo Patrese.

Garage 59 swept the first race weekend of the season for the Bronze Cup class with its McLaren 720S GT3 Evo driven by Henrique Chaves and Miguel Ramos.

RESULTS: Race 2