Kateyama April Test Days at Monza gallery

Italian GT teams used last weekend’s Kateyama Professional Track Days at Monza to get ready for the new season. The Campionato Italiano Gran Turismo starts this upcoming weekend at Monza with two sprint races. Also present were teams from Italy’s TCR and Porsche Carrera Cup championships, DTM team GruppeM Racing, and some others.

It was, however, Michelotto that set the quickest time of the event with a 1:45.769 on Friday, although that should surprise no one as the developer of Ferrari race cars tested a high-powered Ferrari 488 GTE at the Temple of Speed.

Fastest of the GT3 teams was also an unfair comparison, as Daniel Juncadella’s 1:46.097 was set in the GruppeM Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo prepared for DTM and its faster-than-FIA-standard Balance of Performance. The Catalan’s time was over a second and a half faster than Audi Sport Italia’s lap of 1:47.795 set by the #12 Audi R8 LMS GT3 of Ricardo Agostini and Lorenzo Ferrari — the fastest of the Italian GT teams.

Daniel Mancinelli was seen testing aboard the #14 Audi and later announced to compete the 2021 Italian GT Sprint season alongside Vito Postiglione. It is unclear what happened to the earlier-announced Edoardo Morricone.

While Audi Sport Italia went home on Saturday evening, AKM Motorsport and BMW Team Italia were amongst the teams to arrive, making use of the final day of testing on Sunday. Other Italian GT Championship teams that made an appearance during the three days of testing were LP Racing, Easy Race, Imperiale Racing (sporting two new liveries on its Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evos), Dinamic Motorsport, Ebimotors, Nova Race and Ram Autoracing. Pirelli and Dallara also used track-time for development work.

Follow the start of the Italian GT Championship this weekend on GT REPORT.