SPIELBERG, Austria — A triumph for the history books: In Saturday’s ADAC GT Masters race at the Red Bull Ring, Mercedes-AMG not only managed a five-way victory, it was also their 40th success in the traditional championship.
The winners were Jannes Fittje and Finn Wiebelhaus from the Haupt Racing Team, for whom this was the first victory of the current season. “I had a good start to the race and took the lead relatively quickly. The racing speed was great and the car ran perfectly.
The event was broadcast LIVE by SPEED SPORT 1.
“It was great fun,” said Wiebelhaus, describing the course of the race. His teammate Fittje summed up.
“My job was to catch up with the Ferrari in front, which was really fast. In the end, however, everything worked out well. We’ve waited a long time for our first success of the season. I am very happy that we were finally able to take home the big trophy.”
David Schumacher and Salman Owega in the Mercedes-AMG completed a double victory for HRT in second place ahead of the leaders of the table Tom Kalender and the Finn Elias Seppänen, who extended their lead in the table to 18 points with their third place.
Polesitter Max Reis in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 maintained the lead at the start of the race, but had to hand it over to his teammate Wiebelhaus in the third corner. In the early stages, the Italian Fabrizio Crestani in the Ferrari 296 GT3 from Racing One took the lead, driving from sixth position to second place. By the time the pit stop window opened, Wiebelhaus and Crestani had pulled away from the rest of the field.
After the driver change, the pilots not only swapped cockpits, but also positions. The Austrian Ernst Kirchmayr in the Ferrari took the lead. Behind him was Fittje in the Mercedes-AMG, who first closed the gap to the first-placed driver, then overtook him and brought home the win safely. Kirchmayr then lost even more positions and fell back to sixth place. First he was overtaken by Owega, who was visibly satisfied with second place.
“We had a great race in which we finally landed on a podium place again,” Owega said. “I enjoyed the duel with Elias the most, that was really great.”
For third-placed Seppänen, who started from twelfth place with Kalender, it was also a successful run.
“We tried to focus completely on our race and pay less attention to our pursuers in the championship,” Seppänen said. “To increase the lead in the table is of course fantastic.”
Reis and his South African teammate Kwanda Mokoena saw the checkered flag in fourth position. Hubert Haupt and Dennis Fetzer secured victory in the ProAm classification with fifth place.
Team owner Haupt thus completed a memorable day for his team: bringing four vehicles to the finish in the top five and celebrating a class win in addition to the overall victory is something no other team in the history of the series has managed. The Ferrari drivers Kirchmayr/Crestani achieved sixth place, ahead of the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 of Simon Connor Primm in seventh place.
The Frenchman Loris Cabirou and Taylor Hagler from the United States in the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2 of the Grasser Racing Team took eighth place. The championship runners-up, Leon Köhler and Maxime Oosten from the Netherlands, came in ninth in the BMW M4 GT3 from FK Performance.
The top ten were completed by the Holzem twins Sandro and Juliano in the Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo2 from Land Motorsport.