Weekend notebook: CIGT Endurance closes with four Italian titles

At Vallelunga, in the last round of the season of the Italian Gran Turismo Endurance Championship, Ferraris took home the overall title with Fisichella-Mosca’s 488 GT3 Evo 2020, the Team-Manufacturer title with Scuderia Baldini, and in the GT Cup Pro Am class with the 488 Challenge Evo of Luca Demarchi, Simone Patrinicola and Sabatino Di Mare and the Manufacturers' Team with Best Lap. In the final round of the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint at Zandvoort, the Ferrari 296 GT3s took two podiums.

CIGT. The Italian Gran Turismo Endurance Championship ends with four titles for Ferraris. In the season finale, staged at the Vallelunga track, the crew comprising Giancarlo Fisichella and Tommaso Mosca in Scuderia Baldini’s Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020 celebrated the overall Italian win, already taken in the previous round, with a second place.

In fact, the pairing in the no. 27 Ferrari crossed the finish line first, but a post-race decision gave them a 10-second penalty for contact when overtaking, putting them in second place. Scuderia Baldini also picked up the Team-Manufacturer title in Vallelunga, the crowning touch to an unforgettable season.

Luca Demarchi, Simone Patrinicola and Sabatino Di Mare with third place in Best Lap’s Ferrari 488 Challenge Evo number 111 celebrated the Italian win in the GT Cup Pro Am class, mathematically won at the end of the Monza round, on the Lazio podium. For Best Lap also the title in the special Constructors' Teams classification.

Despite finishing second in the GT3 Pro Am class (and fourth overall) and with a higher score than their rivals, Stefano Gai and Jules Castro in AF Corse’s no. 51 Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo 2020 see their dreams of glory slip away due to the discarded results envisaged by the regulations in calculating the end-of-season standings. Third place overall for the pairing, who raced with Eliseo Donno in Vallelunga.

In GT Cup Am, Atzori-Menichini in the no. 251 Ferrari 488 Challenge Evo of the SR&R team end the season with third place in the standings, ahead of Francesco La Mazza in Easy Race’s no. 269.

The Italian Gran Turismo championship will have its season finale in Imola from 27 to 29 October when the Sprint series titles will be awarded.

GT World Challenge Europe. In the last round of the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint, contested on the Dutch Zandvoort track, Emil Frey Racing’s Ferrari 296 GT3 number 69 climbs the podium again. Albert Costa and Thierry Vermeulen succeeded in the first race, thanks to a second-place finish.

The Swiss team’s second car, with Konsta Lappalainen and Giacomo Altoè, instead finished 10th. The pair in car number 14, with Altoè at the steering wheel, even managed to snatch pole at the end of Race-2 qualifying, only to be relegated three grid positions for not slowing down enough in a sector with yellow flags on display.

For Lappalainen-Altoè, fifth place at the end of the race, which earned them seventh place in the final ranking at the end of the season. Albert Costa and Thierry Vermeulen, on the other hand, found themselves fourth in the final championship standings after finishing eighth in Race-2.

In the Silver Cup, AF Corse’s no. 71 Ferrari 296 GT3 with Sean Hudspeth and Nicola Marinangeli ends the season in sixth position thanks to a third place in Race-2 and a sixth in the first.