Weerts, van der Linde Win Sprint Cup Misano Race 1

Charles Weerts and Kelvin van der Linde took a comfortable GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Sprint Cup victory in Race 1 at Misano.

As the sun faded into full darkness by the end of the one-hour race, Weerts and van der Linde’s No. 32 WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO cruised to win by 19.65 seconds over the Lionspeed Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo of Ricardo Feller and Bastian Buus.

Contact at the start proved decisive in the outcome, as Weerts got an excellent launch while polesitter Valentino Rossi’s No. 46 WRT BMW and fellow front-row starter Alessandro Frassineti (Tresor Attempto Racing Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II) both appeared slow away.

Feller attempted to take advantage and split the pair but, as the Italian duo converged, contact was made that unsettled both Rossi and Frassineti while also delaying Feller. Frassineti was bounced into Marvin Dienst’s Winward Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO and the secondary contact spun the Audi across the bows of the luckless Dani Juncadella (Verstappen Racing Mercedes-AMG), eliminating both on the spot.

After the safety car withdrew on lap four, Weerts immediately set about building a lead on the battle for second between Bronze class rivals Dienst and Fabian Schiller (GetSpeed Team Dubai Mercedes-AMG), who managed to keep Rossi behind to the pitstops.

Rossi’s difficult stint was then compounded by a 10-second penalty for being outside the grid hatchings at the start, condemning the home favourite and co-driver Max Hesse to a sixth place finish.

After taking over from Weerts, van der Linde had stretched his advantage to over 8 seconds until a full course yellow was called with five minutes remaining to recover the CSA Racing McLaren 720S GT3 Evo of Romain Andriolo from the gravel. The race was never resumed, which effectively neutralised a tense battle for second.

Having dropped back to sixth behind Lucas Auer’s No. 48 Winward Mercedes-AMG in the opening stages, Feller stayed out one lap longer before handing over to Buus, who emerged ahead of Maro Engel and held the German at bay until the FCY.

Thierry Vermuelen and Ben Green had a quiet run to fourth in their Emil Frey Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo, beating the Gold Cup-winning Tresor Attempto Audi of Dylan Pereira and Alex Aka.

After being displaced by the charging Hesse, Matias Zagazeta was classified seventh overall and second of the Gold Cup entries in the No. 51 AF Corse Ferrari started by Tommaso Mosca until a five-second penalty for track limits infringements demoted them to 15th.

Jordan Pepper and Amaury Cordeel were promoted to seventh in their No. 31 WRT BMW ahead of Simon Reicher and Christopher Haase’s Eastelent Racing Audi and the No. 71 AF Corse Ferrari of Arthur Leclerc and Thomas Neubauer.

Matisse Lismont and Ignacio Montenegro capped off a strong day for WRT by scooping the Silver class and completing the overall top ten overall, while Schiller and Gabriel Rindone took the Bronze class in 21st.

Dienst and Rinat Salikhov had appeared set for the victory with the latter running sixth overall after the pitstop, but lost around 15 seconds and track position to Rindone when the car appeared to temporarily lose power.

Teams will now turn their attentions to qualifying for Race 2, which is due to commence at 10:05 a.m. local time (4:05 a.m. EST) on Sunday and will be available to view on the GT World YouTube channel.

RESULTS: Race 1