Prette and Fleming win Race 1 at Zandvoort as Van der Linde stops on track
A Gold Cup car beat the whole field, Emil Frey took third with Vermeulen and Green, and Van der Linde stopped with the car that lies second in the Sprint Cup.
A Gold Cup car won Race 1 at Zandvoort outright. Louis Prette brought the number 58 Garage 59 McLaren home 0.676s clear of Dorian Boccolacci in the Boutsen VDS Porsche, and the car that arrived leading the Sprint Cup did not finish at all.
In this article
- Prette held Boccolacci to the flag by 0.676s
- Van der Linde stopped with the car chasing the Sprint Cup lead
- Green took two places in one move and claimed the podium
- Lulham came from 28th to sixth and passed Leclerc on the last lap
- Garage 59 took Gold, Team WRT took Silver, Tempesta took Bronze
- The full Race 1 result
- Our bet: Barcelona decides this between three crews
- Qualifying 2 and Race 2 on Sunday
Prette held Boccolacci to the flag by 0.676s
The race was decided at the first corner. Morris Schuring started from his maiden GT World Challenge pole and held the lead through Tarzan, with Thomas Fleming alongside him in the number 58 McLaren. Fleming took the place around the outside on the approach to the Hugenholtzbocht, which is not the obvious way past at Zandvoort, and Garage 59 led from there to the flag.
Fleming was the quicker of the two in the first stint. His best lap of 1m36.337s was more than half a second better than anything Schuring managed. After the driver change the gap settled at between six and nine tenths, and Boccolacci never got closer than 0.676s.
He kept trying. On the final lap he was a tenth quicker than Prette through the first sector. It was not enough.
“Amazing car, amazing pit stop,” Fleming said afterwards. He mentioned something else too. His child turns three on Sunday.
Van der Linde stopped with the car chasing the Sprint Cup lead
The number 32 Team WRT BMW came to Zandvoort leading the Sprint Cup on 49.5 points. It qualified 33rd, Charles Weerts worked it up to 24th in the first stint, and then it stopped.
Kelvin van der Linde had taken over at the pit stop. The car came to a halt beside the track in the closing stages with a technical problem, Van der Linde climbed out, and the race ran under a full course yellow while it was recovered. There was no contact with another car.
Van der Linde arrived at Zandvoort carrying a five place grid penalty for an incident at Magny-Cours. The official starting grid showed the car 33rd, where Weerts had qualified it, so the penalty did not change where it started this race.
Green took two places in one move and claimed the podium
Thierry Vermeulen qualified the number 69 Emil Frey Racing Ferrari ninth and ran seventh in the opening stint. Ben Green took over and finished the job.
With six minutes left Green was fifth, behind Simon Birch and Ricardo Feller, in a group of four covered by half a second. On lap 32 he set a 1m36.432s while Birch managed 1m37.957s and Feller 1m38.142s, and he cleared both of them. That is a second and a half a lap faster than the cars he was stuck behind.
He finished third, 10.217s behind Boccolacci and comfortably clear of the rest.
Lulham came from 28th to sixth and passed Leclerc on the last lap
Daniel Juncadella qualified the number 3 Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing entry 27th, which was the story of Saturday morning for the wrong reasons. By the time Chris Lulham took the car over it was 28th.
He finished sixth. The last of those places came on the final lap, past Arthur Leclerc in the AF Corse Ferrari, after Scheivlak. The two had been within two tenths of each other for three laps.
Garage 59 took Gold, Team WRT took Silver, Tempesta took Bronze
Prette and Fleming won Gold Cup and the race. Boccolacci and Schuring won Pro in second overall. Ignacio Montenegro and Matisse Lismont took Silver in the number 30 Team WRT BMW, ninth overall. Peter Dempsey and Eddie Cheever won Bronze in the number 93 Ziggo Sport Tempesta Racing Porsche.
Garage 59 had the widest afternoon of any team. The number 58 won, and the number 59 of Dean Macdonald, which qualified sixth, fell to 35th in the opening laps and never recovered.
The full Race 1 result
Top eighteen, which covers every class winner. Gaps are to the car ahead. Times taken from the official live timing; the result is provisional until the stewards confirm it.
| Pos | No | Class | Drivers | Team | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 58 | Gold | Louis Prette / Thomas Fleming | Garage 59 (McLaren) | |
| 2 | 2 | Pro | Dorian Boccolacci / Morris Schuring | Boutsen VDS (Porsche) | +0.676 |
| 3 | 69 | Pro | Ben Green / Thierry Vermeulen | Emil Frey Racing (Ferrari) | +10.217 |
| 4 | 914 | Pro | Simon Birch / Klaus Bachler | Razoon – more than racing (Porsche) | +4.933 |
| 5 | 80 | Pro | Ricardo Feller / Bastian Buus | Lionspeed GP (Porsche) | +0.291 |
| 6 | 3 | Pro | Chris Lulham / Daniel Juncadella | Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing | +0.540 |
| 7 | 50 | Pro | Arthur Leclerc / Thomas Neubauer | AF Corse (Ferrari) | +0.713 |
| 8 | 51 | Gold | Matias Zagazeta / Tommaso Mosca | AF Corse (Ferrari) | +0.550 |
| 9 | 30 | Silver | Ignacio Montenegro / Matisse Lismont | Team WRT (BMW) | +0.425 |
| 10 | 7 | Pro | Kobe Pauwels / Nicki Thiim | Comtoyou Racing (Aston Martin) | +0.861 |
| 11 | 163 | Gold | Mattia Michelotto / Loris Spinelli | VSR (Lamborghini) | +2.816 |
| 12 | 10 | Gold | Gilles Magnus / Robin Knutsson | Boutsen VDS (Porsche) | +0.635 |
| 13 | 46 | Pro | Max Hesse / Valentino Rossi | Team WRT (BMW) | +0.220 |
| 14 | 48 | Pro | Maro Engel / Lucas Auer | Winward Racing (Mercedes-AMG) | +6.174 |
| 15 | 99 | Gold | Alex Aka / Dylan Pereira | Tresor Attempto Racing (Audi) | +0.011 |
| 16 | 66 | Silver | Andrea Frassineti / Ariel Levi | Tresor Attempto Racing (Audi) | +0.572 |
| 17 | 14 | Pro | Konsta Lappalainen / Matteo Cairoli | Emil Frey Racing (Ferrari) | +0.321 |
| 18 | 93 | Bronze | Peter Dempsey / Eddie Cheever | Ziggo Sport Tempesta Racing (Porsche) | +2.621 |
Our bet: Barcelona decides this between three crews
We are not going to put numbers on the championship until the official points are published, because the Sprint Cup scale is not a straight ladder and a win is worth 16.5 points. What the afternoon did is clear enough without them.
Van der Linde and Weerts scored nothing. Feller and Buus finished fifth. Juncadella and Lulham finished sixth, Leclerc and Neubauer seventh. Three of the five title crews took points out of a weekend that began with all of them behind the number 32, and the fourth took none.
There is one more race here on Sunday and then Barcelona. Our bet is that this is now a three way fight, and that the crew who arrived leading it is the one under the most pressure.
Qualifying 2 and Race 2 on Sunday
Qualifying 2 runs on Sunday morning, Group A from 10:35 and Group B from 10:50, with the combined classification at 11:00. Race 2 starts at 14:15 and runs for one hour with a mandatory pit stop and driver change.
