International GT Open – Silverstone

Round 5 of the 2018 International GT Open Championship took place at Silverstone with the #52 Luzich Racing Ferrari 488 GT3 of Daniel Serra (and Marco Cioci) taking pole position of the first race…

With a perfect start, Serra was able to start pulling early away from the rest of the field following closely from each other. While arguably never in serious contention for a strong finish, Luzich Racing’s #71 car in ProAm had an early setback after Alexander West’s collision with the #20 SPS Mercedes AMG GT3 of Valentin Pierburg putting both cars a lap down. The only retirement of the race would occur on lap 9 as Team Parker Racing’s Ian Loggie was forced to retire in the pits due to a gearbox failure in the #24 Bentley GT3 and just a few laps later, the mandatory pit stops would take place for driver changes. After all of the changes had been made, the #52 Luzich maintained the lead with Marco Cioci leading by just under 5 seconds ahead of Jeroen Mul in the #63 Imperiale Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3. Mul would close down on Cioci for the remainder of the race but after 70 minutes and 34 laps, Cioci was able to bring the #52 Ferrari home with a winning margin of just 0.471 seconds over Mul while #47 BMW Team Teo Martin came 9 seconds further back in 3rd place. Bradley Ellis and Oliver Wilkinson claimed a home win in the ProAm class (7th overall) in their #96 Optimium Motorsport Audi R8 LMS, again narrowly beating 2nd place finishers Rinat Salikhov and David Perel in the #333 Rinaldi Racing Ferrari 488 GT3. Though a relatively short race, all but two of the finishing cars remained on the lead lap. Round 6 of the GT Open will take place at Monza on 22nd-23rd September.

Supporting races Marc Crader and Stuart Mosely claim victory in the Radical European Masters, which had a modest grid of six cars (including a SuperSport class car), over Louis Hamilton-Smith and Theodor Olsen. In the Euroformula Open single seater race composing of Dallara F12 cars, Felipe Drugovich was able to claim his eighth win of the season in relatively comfortable fashion. Leading from pole, Drugovich was able to set an early fast pace though he was kept honest by Bent Viscaal keeping pace with him though the Dutch rookie could not keep up with Drugovich later in the race as the Brazilian would win by a hair under 4 seconds in the 15-lap race. Taking the third step of the podium was Lukas Dunner, another rookie in the series, who was able to hold off challenges from Alex Karkosik and Marcos Siebert who would take 4th and 5th places respectively. As rookies in overall standings, Viscaal and Dunner took to the podium for a second time, joined by 3rd place rookie Yves Baltas who finished 8th overall for Campos Racing. In the Alpine Elf Europa Cup, World Endurance Championship driver Oliver Webb was invited to compete at Silverstone and wasted no time getting to grips with the car, taking pole position by four-tenths of a second over 2nd-place qualifier Pierre Sancinena despite Webb having a time excluded for exceeding track limits. The Brit had a strong start of the race leading the field while by contrast Sancinena dropped to seventh place by the end of the first lap though he would recover to 5th by the end of the race. Webb seldom looked under threat from his competition and claimed a relatively easy win by almost 5 seconds in the 12-lap race ahead of Vincent Beltoise and Gael Castelli, who would take second and third place overall.