NÜRBURGRING (GERMANY): Oman’s Al Faisal bin Khalid al Zubair, Austrian Dominik Baumann and Canadian Mikaël Grenier delivered another impressive performance to finish second in the Gold Cup category at the third round of the 2024 Fanatec GT World Challenge powered by AWS Endurance Cup at Germany’s Nürburgring circuit on Sunday evening.
The three-hour race developed into a predictable duel between the Saintéloc Racing trio of Paul Evrard, Gilles Magnus and Jim Pla and the Al Manar Racing by Getspeed crew in their Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo.
Grenier drove the last stint of the three-hour race and finished just 4.974 seconds behind Magnus in the Saintéloc Racing Audi, as the two teams pulled clear of their rivals in the title race after the German race weekend.
The Haupt Racing Mercedes crew finished third and the CSA Racing Tresor Attempto Racing Audis rounded off the Gold Cup leader board after a demanding race on the notorious German circuit.
Al Faisal said: “It was a good race today and very tight between the Gold Cup contenders. I feel with the package that we had coming into the weekend that a win was definitely possible. But we were just short of that. Second place here at the Nürburgring and second in the championship, just nine points behind the leaders, I believe. Anything can happen at the final two rounds.
“The fight for the championship is still on. We have been quite consistent now with a second, first and a second, so I am quite happy with that. We struggled with the car a bit and that got us short of the win but the Audi seemed a bit too quick here this weekend. Hopefully we will be back on the top step in Monza.”
Gold Cup rivals Saintéloc Racing topped the times in Saturday morning’s free practice session with a best lap of 1min 56.043sec. Haupt Racing carded the second quickest Gold Cup run of 1min 57.458sec with Al Manar Racing by Getspeed down in fourth with a fastest tour of 1min 58.541sec.
Al Zubair took part in the opening qualifying session on Sunday morning and carded a best lap of 1min 56.695sec on his fourth tour of the circuit to slot into third behind Saintéloc Racing’s Jim Pla and Tresor Attempto Racing’s Lorenzo Patrese.
Baumann then topped the times in his Q2 stint with a best lap of 1min 54.543sec and Grenier ran third in his Q3 stint behind the Haupt Racing Team’s Arjun Maini and Saintéloc Racing’s Gilles Magnus.
With the times combined, the Al Manar Racing by Getspeed Mercedes would line up for the race in second place behind the Saintéloc Racing Audi.
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