SPINELLI AND WEERING MAKE IT TWO FROM TWO LAMBORGHINI SUPER TROFEO EUROPE WINS AT THE NURBURGRING

Max Weering and Loris Spinelli survived a pit-stop time penalty to give Johan Kraan Motorsports its second Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe victory of the weekend at the Nürburgring – and third of the 2021 season – beating Leipert Motorsport’s Sebastian Balthasar and Seb Morris with a final-lap overtake. The #61 Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo Evo, in the hands of Spinelli, then opened up a margin of 1.5 seconds to complete the clean sweep in Germany.

Having taken pole position on home soil, Balthasar gave the #2 Leipert Motorsport car the early lead as Target Racing’s Raúl Guzman consolidated his second place exiting the first corner. Behind, GSM Racing’s Kevin Rossel held third, despite having to fend off the points leading Oregon Team Huracán of Kevin Gilardoni at Turn 3. Gilardoni was momentarily overtaken by the #33 Bonaldi Motorsport car of Daan Pijl but the Swiss driver – who was last year’s vice-champion – fought back on entry to the Turn 4 left-hander to reclaim the advantage and keep the place.

There was then drama on the second lap as Rossel attempted to dive down the inside of Guzman for second as the pair negotiated Turn 1. Guzman held on to the position but was soon facing the wrong way round after suffering a right-rear puncture to the #41 car. He was out of the race soon after. At the same time, Gilardoni passed Rossel, who had gone too deep trying to round Guzman, which elevated the Oregon Team machine to Balthasar’s nearest challenger for the remainder of the opening stint.

The order remained largely the same at the top of the pack, as Balthasar established a lead of over two seconds from Gilardoni before the mandatory pit-stop window opened after 20 minutes. Gilardoni was the first of the leading cars to make his stop, at the start of the 10-minute window – swapping with Leonardo Pulcini.

Balthasar, meanwhile, left his stop until the end of the window before changing with new team-mate Seb Morris. The 2017 British GT champion emerged from the pit-lane with the lead still intact, but with a reduced margin to Pulcini who was on warm tyres.

Unseen to the leaders at the moment, was the progress of the Race 1 winning crew of Max Weering and Loris Spinelli (#61 Johan Kraan Motorsports) which started from a lowly 12^th on the grid following a five-place grid penalty for overtaking under red flags during second qualifying. Weering passed four cars during his stint to run eighth before the pit-stop cycle. Swapping with Spinelli, the #61 soon became the fastest car on the track and picked off another three cars heading into the final minutes. Spinelli’s pace was superb and the Italian perfected overtakes on Pijl’s team-mate Danny Kroes at Turn 8 and then Rossel.

The crew were, however, handed a 1.2s post-race time penalty for being below the minimum pit-stop time allocation but Spinelli continued to charge on, displacing Pulcini in a late lunge down the inside of Turn 5, before passing Morris on the exit of Turn 1 on the very last lap. Impressively, Spinelli was able to gap Morris by more than the required 1.3 seconds to ensure the #61 crew completed the double triumph.

Race winner Loris Spinelli (#61 Johan Kraan Motorsports) said: “Today the pace was really good, and I was focused on the Pulcini/Gilardoni car because Max is fighting for the title. And then [when I got past], I thought ‘why not go for the lead?’ and I did it, so this is incredible. Many thanks to the team this weekend and to Max for a great first stint. Now, let’s see in Misano: I will do everything I can to help bring Max the championship. I didn’t know about the penalty because the radio stopped working! I tried to push a lot in the last laps, but I didn’t know what gap I had to make, for sure.”

Team-mate Max Weering commented: “This victory definitely means much more than yesterday. I overtook four people in my stint, I got closer to the top guys, so Loris was able to easily get to the top in his stint. He did really great job with the gap after the penalty, he is a machine and such a great driver. We weren’t able to tell Loris how much gap to make but luckily, he was able to do it. He drives a Lamborghini like nobody else!”

In the Pro-Am category, Target Racing’s Andrea Cola and Dmitry Gvazava repeated their success from Race 1, taking victory from Oregon Team’s Massimo Ciglia and Guillem Pujeu by a fraction under four seconds at the flag. Leipert Motorsport’s Dan Wells and Oscar Lee led the early part of the race from pole but Lee fell behind Cola in the second half, eventually coming home fifth.

Edoardo Liberati and Andrzej Lewandowski finished third in class to maintain their lead in the class points standings, while Micanek Motorsport pairing Bromek Formanek and Josef Zaruba finished fourth. Han Huilin withstood immense pressure from Target Racing’s Miguel Ramos to claim the victory in the Am class; the pair were split by a mere quarter of a second at the chequered flag. Ramos’s team-mate Adrian Amstutz drove the first stint and was embroiled in an entertaining scrap with Leipert Motorsport’s Gerhard Watzinger before handing over to Ramos. Watzinger completed the podium in third.

Gerard van der Horst made it two Lamborghini Cup wins from two this weekend with another mature drive in his self-run Van der Horst Motorsport #98 Huracán. He finished a lap ahead of Boutsen Ginion’s Pierre Feligioni and Daniel Waszczinski, having earlier fought with Benoît and François Semoulin before the latter received a drivethrough penalty for pit-lane speeding. That penalty elevated Donovan and Luciano Privitelio to the final step on the podium for FFF Racing Team.

Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe now heads to Misano Adriatico for the final two races of the year at the end of October. The Italian circuit will also play host to the traditional season-closing Lamborghini Super Trofeo World Finals.

Source. Lamborghini