The start of the season got underway at Portimao, Portugal. A surprising pole man, a record field and a number of retirements. At the end of the day, Lucas Auer was the luckiest winning race one.
A surprising start to the day. Lamborghini’s Mirko Bortolotti managed to take the first pole position of the season with a time of 1:39.678. He’s not a complete rookie in the series, as he made a guest appearance in 2021. He brings a lot of GT experience from his previous years in other GT3 series. A new face to the series, Mikael Grenier ended qualifying in second, followed by Lucas Auer, Felipe Fraga and Nicki Thiim.
Starting from pole, Bortolotti immediately was under pressure from Grenier. After a few corners of battling each other, GRT’s Bortolotti managed to stay ahead. Auer profited from it to take over second place from Grenier. Further down there weren’t many changes in positions or battles.
Image credit: Audi Sport Twitter Page
Though, on the third lap of the race it was Dev Gore who slowed on track and dropped back to the last place. The Rosberg driver headed to the pits to retire. Gore said he already experienced problems on the formation lap and suffered from gearbox damage. After he spun it was all over. Not many moments later, his teammate Nico Mueller slowed and also headed to the pits to retire his Audi. Said he took a few touches in the first lap battles, which probably caused a rear right puncture. Unfortunately, this means end of the race for both Team Rosberg cars. On the sixth lap, BMW’s Marco Wittmann retired as well.
On the sixth lap of the race, the first drivers headed to the pits for their mandatory stops. Feller was one of the first to pit and also stayed ahead of the drivers that followed. On the tenth lap of the race both Bortolotti and Thiim pitted. The latter understeered once back on track and lost position to Grenier.
Then, at the end of lap 15, Kelvin van der Linde and Sebastien Loeb headed to the pits. When van der Linde rejoined the track, he was battling Gotz. He did however have cold tires which meant defending hard. Luckily, this paid off and van der Linde kept position. Only one lap later, GRT’s Rolf Ineichen pitted. While rejoining the track, he parked his car besides the track and retired. It remained uncertain what exactly happend, but it did bring out a yellow flag and safety car. As a result of the new rules, the remaining drivers that did not make their pitstops yet, came in to pit during the safety car period.
On lap 22 the race restarted. A big deciding moment, as Bortolotti completely lost it at the restart and dropped back a few positions. Lucas Auer now being first, ahead of Luca Stolz and Maro Engel, all Mercedes drivers. Bortolotti now being fourth. During the restart, there were a few moments of contact which left quite a lot of bodywork on start/finish. Fraga spun and was forced to retire. Moments later, Rene Rast came in to the pits to also retire his Audi. The latter said he got touched by Fraga during the restart which caused damage.
During the final laps of the race, things did not get boring. Fair but hard battles, mostly between Engel and Bortolotti fighting for the final podium position. However, while battling each other also Kelvin van der Linde was closing in. During the final lap op the race, Bortolotti finally managed to pass Engel with a clean move on the straight. In the end, the restart was under investigation as well as the pitstops of Engel and Marius Zug. Engel received a five-second time penalty for it and dropped back.
So, eventually Auer won the race ahead of Stolz and Bortolotti. The latter explained that he had no idea what happened during the restart, just suddenly no power. Another new feature this year is the fastest lap of the race, winning an additional point. Stolz won this. Kelvin van der Linde finished fourth ahead of Dennis Olsen, Ricardo Feller and his little brother Sheldon van der Linde. The top ten was completed by Porsche’s Laurens Vanthoor, Philipp Eng and due to his time penalty Maro Engel.
Tomorrow we have another qualifying session followed by the second race of the weekend.
