Ferraris made their mark in the Ultimate Cup Series at Misano, with several victories in the GT Hyper Sprint. Lucky Khera and David McDonald won again in the GT Cup at Oulton Park, and Prancing Horse cars also enjoyed good results in the International GT Open at Budapest.
International GT Open. It was the last race before the summer break for the cars competing in round four of the series at Budapest. Two intense races, the first featuring two Safety Cars, yielded two podiums for the Prancing Horse cars in the Am class. In Race-1, Stanislaw Jedlinski and Krystian Korzeniowski of Olimp Racing claimed second place – with Stephen Earle and Erwin Zanotti of Kessel Racing fifth – while on Sunday, they had to settle for third place on the podium just ahead of the Swiss team’s pairing. With these results, the Polish crew now lies fifth in the overall standings.
In the Pro-Am, Kessel Racing, fifth in the team standings, bagged sixth and tenth place with Roman Ziemian and Axcil Jefferies, and eighth and sixth with Murat Ruhi Cuhadaroglu and David Fumanelli, the latter currently fifth in the class standings.
The series’ next round, the fifth of the season, is on 11 September at the Red Bull Ring in Austria.
Ultimate Cup Series. The Ultimate Cup Series visited the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli in Italy for round three of the season. In the GT Endurance, the Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020 of the Visiom team with Jean-Paul Pagny, David Hallyday and Jean Bernard Bouvet only managed third place overall after vying for victory in the first part of the four-hour race.
Two wins in the UGT3A class of the GT Hyper Sprint came courtesy of the SR&R-Scuderia Ravetto & Ruberti team: Edoardo Barbolini secured the first, while his teammate Luca Demarchi claimed the second. However, a third podium proved elusive in Race-3 with the driver change. The team was penalised with a drive-through for veering off track. In the UGT3B category, the Ferrari of Alexis Berthet of CMR won Race-1 and 3, finishing runner-up in Race-2. Third place in the same class went to Alfredo Salerno in the Ferrari 488 Challenge Evo of SR&R-Scuderia Ravetto & Ruberti in the first race.
The next round of the Ultimate Cup Series is scheduled for 16-18 September in Hockenheim, Germany.
GT Cup Championship. Oulton Park hosted the championship’s fourth round at the weekend, which saw two spectacular races.
In the first 40-minute outing in the GTC class, Racelab’s Ferrari 488 Challenge Evo finished fourth in class with Lucky Khera and David McDonald, delayed by a lengthy pit stop due to a penalty after it had led for many laps. In Race-2, the contest between the Ferrari and the Lamborghini of Topcats Racing with HEX.com continued. At the start, Khera did well to hold the lead until the driver change. On re-entry, the Lamborghini took first place, but a subsequent mistake caused the car to go off the track and retire. The situation handed the advantage to McDonald, who was first over the finishing line.
Khera and McDonald now sit third in the overall standings, twelve points behind the leader, while in the GTC class they hold first place with 262 points. The next round will run on 30 and 31 July at Silverstone.
24H Series. In the 24 Hours of Portimão, the Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020 of WTM Racing crewed by Georg Weiss, Leonard Weiss, Jochen Krumbach, Daniel Keilwitz, and Indy Dontje crossed the line in third place overall. However, after post-race technical checks, the Maranello car was disqualified due to an exhaust irregularity. The championship returns to the track on 10 September for the 24 Hours of Barcelona.