Race 2 of the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered By AWS Sprint at Magny-Cours saw a dominant drive from Raffaele Marciello which left the #89 AKKODIS ASP Team Mercedes take the flag with a 13.6 second lead over second place. Marciello did all the hard work in his opening stint leaving team mate Timur Boguslavskiy to maintain the lead which he did with ease.
MAGNY-COURS | LIVESTREAM | RACE 1 REPORT | RACE 2 REPORT | GALLERY
The championship leading #32 Team WRT Audi of Dries Vanthoor and Charles Weerts couldn’t replicate their win in race one yesterday after Vanthoor found himself in the gravel at the first corner. Running out of race track as the pack headed around Grande Courbe, Vanthoor had no choice but to take to the gravel trap but fortunately kept everything in a straight line to rejoin halfway around Estoril but down in P15.
At the front Raffaele Marciello starting from pole held the lead and started to build a gap to Maxi Götz in the sister #88 AKKODIS ASP Team Mercedes. Marciello in the #89 car was very quickly nearly 5 seconds infront of his teammate.
Behind Götz, Christopher Mies in the #33 Team WRT Audi was holding station half a second behind but was able to make a move on the run from Adelaide and into Nurburgring. Götz seemed to be taken by surprise and left the door open for Patric Niederhauser to barge his way past into 180.
At the pit window Marciello was 11 seconds ahead and the Italian stayed out as long as he could to maximise the gap he was building, finally dropping into the pit lane with the gap up to 15 seconds.
It was in the pitlane that this race would be forged as Team WRT turned around the #32 championship leading Audi in 40.5 seconds which pushed the car four places up the table. Charles Weerts had taken over from Vanthoor and was fighting hard but in the end couldn’t finish higher than P6.
For the second placed #33 WRT Audi of Christopher Mies and Jean-Baptiste Simmenauer the pit stop robbed them of second place. Exiting his pit box, Simmenauer was released into the path of the Garage 59 McLaren. Contact was avoided but the stewards awarded a 10 second penalty to be applied after the race.
This dropped the #33 Audi to P4, gifting second place back to the #88 of Jim Pla and Maxi Götz. The #25 Sainteloc Audi of Patric Niederhauser and Aurelien Panis took third place despite a 5 second penalty for contact earlier in the race.
The next race in the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS will be at Paul Ricard for the 1000km race on the 3rd and 5th June.
Please consider making a donation so we can keep bringing you our best content from the racetrack.