The first of the two races of the Lamborghini Grand Finals took place this afternoon at the Portimao circuit where the win went to the Bonaldi Motorsport duo of Loris Spinelli and Max Weering.
The Italian team was given a hard time in the early stages of the race by Nelson Piquet Jr. who took the lead at the start, ahead of Karol Basz and Spinelli, but the Italian took just one lap to get past the Micanek Motorsport driver and move into second place.
Spinelli was able to slot in right behind Piquet’s exhausts, giving rise to an all-out battle that lasted six laps. Throughout this exciting duel, the Italian was all over Piquet, trying in vain to find a place to pass the Brazilian.
Then on lap 7, he made an outstanding passing move on the ex-F1 driver on the outside to take the lead. At that point, Spinelli gradually pulled away at a rapid rate of knots, building up a substantial lead before pitting to hand over to his team-mate Max Weering.
On lap 9 however things went a bit wrong: Jean-François Brunot was forced to retire, parking his Huracan on the track and forcing the race direction to send out the safety car, which as a result eliminated all the gaps.
At the same time the Iron Dames car of Doriane Pin came into the pits for a DNF finish, probably due to excessive contact in the first lap of the race.
The safety car came back in two laps later and the race resumed at the same pace: Spinelli pushing hard to create as big a gap as possible to allow the less expert Weering to hold off any attacks from his rivals and bring home the win.
On lap 16 Piquet came in for his pit stop, while Spinelli was held up by backmarker Dario Capitanio for more than one lap, losing vital seconds. Once the driver change had gone through, Weering began his race ahead of Piquet and Milan Teekens (Target).
The Dutchman, paired with Marzio Moretti, managed to capitalize on Piquet’s slightly longer pit stop (because he was driving solo) and overtake him in the pits. At that point Teekens proved to be Weering’s best ally by keeping the faster Piquet at bay.
Weering went on to take the win, by almost three seconds over the Dutchman and another three over Piquet, but the cold shower for Teekens came at the end of the race when he was handed a 5” penalty for exceeding the track limits multiple times.
The penalty meant that Piquet was classified second ahead of the Dutchman. Just off the podium was Dario Capitanio, who was not penalized despite unwittingly obstructing Spinelli. The top 5 was completed by Switzerland’s Jean-Luc D'Auria.
As for the PRO AM class, victory went to the Precision Performance Motorsport team with Bryan Ortiz and Sebastian Carazo. It was a convincing performance and they came home ahead of the surprising second place finishers of the Rexal FFF Racing Team, made up of ex-MotoGP racer Dani Pedrosa and Antonin Borga.
Third went to Gerhard Watzinger and Brendon Leitch (Leipert Motorsport). Leitch was in second place until the flag, but was penalized 5” for exceeding track limits, as a result losing second to the FFF Team.
