A few weeks after the 24 Hours of Spa, the GT World Challenge Europe season picked up again at Misano. Just like we had in Belgium, this was an extremely hot weekend. Even though at Misano the circuit is very close to the sea, the temperatures were still really high. I drove at this track in 2024, with an Aston Martin, but I missed the race last year. Nacho had driven it in TCR, but in general we were not the most experienced crew going into the event.
Still, we knew WRT could give us a strong package for our BMW and we were in the right window from the first free practice session. I was P2 in Silver and P13 overall, which was not bad considering there were 43 cars racing at Misano! The second free practice was run in the evening to help prepare for Saturday's race and here we finished P6 in Silver.
With these practice results, we went into Saturday with a good feeling. I was entered in Q1 and I was quite happy with my performance. It was a slightly tricky session, with a red flag right at the beginning, but I got a clear lap and qualified P3 in Silver and P16 overall. This put us in a nice position to fight for the win.
The first race began at 20:30 on Saturday evening, just before sunset, and I took the start. There was a crash ahead of me on the run to turn 1 which I had to avoid, and this brought out the safety car for a few laps. During my stint I made up a place to run P2 in Silver when I came in for the pit stop.
The guys did a good stop and Nacho was able to hold on to our position when he took over. I have to say that he was really strong during his stint and managed to get on to the tail of the Silver leader, then made a pass to take the position. He brought it home for our second Sprint win of the year and we finished P10 overall, which is a nice bonus in such a competitive field.
Nacho was in the car for Q2 and managed to take P5 in Silver. After the night race on Saturday, we were on track in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday, which meant the track temperature was 52 degrees! Nacho started and delivered another strong stint, bringing the car into the pits in P3.
I took over and stayed in the same position, but the car felt good and I was able to catch up to P2. I managed to overtake him and crossed the line in second place, but we were given a time penalty for an unsafe release during our pit stop. This meant we fell back to P3 in the final result.
It was a small mistake, which can happen when you are pushing the limits in search of the best possible performance. In the end we were still on the podium, which made it five times from six races, so Misano was a very good weekend for us. A victory and a third place is something we can be very satisfied with.
We have extended our lead in the Sprint championship to 14 points, and we now have a really big advantage in the combined Silver standings. We have to thank WRT for giving us a mega car all weekend, it really was a pleasure to drive. I also want to congratulate the team for winning both races overall. It was a fantastic job by Charles and Kelvin, and congrats also to Valentino for taking pole on Saturday. Misano was honestly a dream weekend for WRT.
There's not much time to rest, because in less than two weeks we'll be at Magny-Cours for the third Sprint Cup round of the year. This is another circuit that should be quite suited to our car and to the team, so I'm really looking forward to it. We have a crazy amount of momentum at the moment and we will do everything we can to keep it going for as long as possible!
Photocredit Michele Scudiero WRT
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