Winward Racing and Mercedes AMG Win at Monza

The German team won for the first time on the very fast Italian track. Engel, Cairoli and Auer got the measure of the car of Jules Gounon and his teammates who had dominated the first part of the race.

Published 01/06/2025 à 21:40

Comment on this article! ⁰

Winward Racing and Mercedes AMG win at Monza

©SRO

As usual, the endurance series organized by SRO Motorsports group is full of entries with 59 cars registered for the second round of the GT World Challenge Europe season. The race was quite eventful, when we analyze the number of retirements at the end of the 3 hours of racing (15 cars did not cross the finish line including the two Ferrari AF Corse 50 and 51). At 15 p.m., Jules Gounon set off in front of the pack and managed to control the attacks of his opponents. After a brief appearance by the safety car, the driver of the Mercedes Team Getspeed's AMG GT is finding its cruising speed, but Gounon hasn't been able to get rid of Matteo Cairoli, who has brought the No. 48 into second position.

A fatal full course yellow for Getspeed!

When the Franco-Andorran gave up his seat to his young teammate Fabian Schiller, the standings remained unchanged at the front of the race. With 1 hour and 35 minutes to go, the race was interrupted by a full course yellow to remove the Ford Mustang of Thomas Drouet (Haupt Racing Team) stranded in the gravel trap of the second chicane. Schiller's car, having stopped a few moments earlier, lost the lead to Cairoli, who handed the wheel to Lucas Auer at the right moment. The driver DTM leaves the race as a solid leader. Schiller has fallen back to 6th place behind 4 rather tough cars to overtake. The German driver is uncompromising and climbs back to second place in the race, about 12 seconds behind the leaders before the final round of stops. The two leaders leave with the knife between their teeth. Unfortunately, a few turns after leaving the pits, Lucas Stolz, who took over from Schiller, will experience the terrible disappointment of discovering that his left front wheel has come off. The German driver has no other solution than to stop his now undriveable "silver arrow".

McLaren and Aston Martin on the podium in Pro

The standings were obviously shaken up by this unexpected withdrawal. At the finish, the Mercedes AMG GT of Engel-Cairoli and Auer won ahead of the McLaren 720 S GT3 from Garage 59 (Loake-Kirchhöfer-Goethe). L'Aston Martin Comtoyou Racing's Vantage (Thiim-Sorensen-Drudi) completes the podium. 5th in the race, the BMW of Team WRT (S. van der Linde-de Wilde-Weerts) retains the lead in the general classification.

In the Gold category, the BMW M4 GT3 of Klingsmann-Tuck and Al Zubair won (4th overall). In Silver, victory went to another BMW M4, the No. 42 of Waberski-Jansen-Moore. The bronze went to the Porsche 911 No. 97 of Antares Au and Hartog (Rutronik Racing)

The next round of the GT World Challenge Europe is none other than the highlight of the endurance season with the biggest GT race of the year: the 24 Hours of Spa Francorchamps. The date is set for June 28-29 in the Belgian Ardennes.