David Fumanelli finished ninth in the final round of the SRO E-Sport GT Series. He was the best of the Ferrari drivers in the Pro class, racing at Kyalami. The 488 GT3 drivers were hoping for a podium finish in South Africa and even though they didn’t hit their target, they raced well all the same.
Chaos at the start. After a closely contested qualifying, the first seven lapping in less than a second of one another, the race was run at dawn on a dry track. Missing from this round were Chris Froggatt (Sky Tempesta Racing) e Maksim Yefanov (Fasttuning). David Perel, tenth in qualifying saw his podium hopes wiped out right from the start, when he collided with Morris. The South African Rinaldi Racing driver dropped to 21st place and the Competizioni GT driver, Nicklas Nielsen shot off the line, but was pushed into the wall by a McLaren and had to retire. At this point, Fumanelli was the best placed Ferrari in twelfth. The Kessel Racing man had to keep an eye on his mirrors because the Ferraris of Hillebrand and Perel had shot up the order and were closing on the Italian.
On the attack. On lap 12, there was a change among the Ferrari drivers, with Hillebrand 11th, Perel 12th and Fumanelli 13th. At this point, Buttler-Pal Motorsport’s German driver closed the gap to Alex Buncombe and, with 26 minutes to go, passed him with a brilliant move at the first corner. David Perel was slipstreaming the German and tried a similar move but collided with the Bentley driver and got a drive through. Hillebrand catched again Buncombe and passed him with four minutes to go, also trying to get past Pareras, but a collision put him in the wall, damaging his 488 GT3. That left the way clear for David Fumanelli, who had moved into tenth following another collision between Buncombe and Pareras. Then, on the very last lap he passed the Bentley driver to end the 60 minute race in ninth place. Behind them, thanks to an overtaking move on Hillebrand at the last corner, Perel managed to finish 12th, ahead of the German.
Time for real racing. This was the final round of the first edition of the SRO E-Sport GT Series which now makes way for real racing in the SRO series. In Europe, competitors in the GT World Series will be on track at Imola from 25-26 July, for the first round of the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup.