AKKA-ASP winner in C1 in Budapest with the Abril-Marciello duo

Raffaele Marciello and Vincent Abril easily won the first race of the Blancpain GT World Challenge Europe final in Budapest, Hungary.

The duettists of the Mercedes-AMG GT3 n°88 – AKKA-ASP dominated from start to finish in an event contested on a wet track, drying out somewhat towards the end of the race.

Following showers before the start, forced the officials to start under safety car regime, Raffaele Marciello leading the peloton ahead of Luca Stolz (Mercedes-AMG GT3 n°4 – Black Falcon) and Mirko Bortolotti (Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo n°63 – GRT).

A trio which will prove to be the only one to liven up this first confrontation of the weekend, notably with Bortolotti who takes second place from Stolz in the sequence of the second and third turns.

The order in the top three does not change after the driver changes, with Vincent Abril in the lead ahead of Christian Engelhart and Maro Engel. But the latter, in the running for the title against the #63 Lamborghini and especially against the other Huracan #563 – FFF Racing of Andrea Caldarelli and Marco Mapelli, knows that all points can count and is coming back little by little on the car with the orange and green livery.

The German tried everything and succeeded in overtaking on the last lap, without however being able to catch up with Vincent Abril, winner with his teammate Raffaele Marciello.

Engel and Stolz performed excellently in the championship, finishing second ahead of Bortolotti – Engelhart, and came within two points of the standings leaders Caldarelli – Mapelli, only 5th behind Clemens Schmid – Kelvin van der Linde (Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo n°66 – Attempto Racing).

There will therefore be two crews (Caldarelli – Mapelli and Engel – Stolz) to compete for the World Challenge Europe 2019 title. AKKA-ASP achieves almost full success in the categories, with victories in the Silver Cup for Nico Bastian – Thomas Neubauer (Mercedes n °89) and in Pro-Am with the duo Jim Pla – Jean-Luc Beaubelique, Pla overtaking Phil Keen (Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo n°519 – FFF Racing) on ​​the last lap.

Victory in the Am Cup for Florian Scholze and Wolfgang Triller (Ferrari 488 GT3 n°444 – HB Racing).