Lamborghini | Race 1 Grand Finals AM: Wins for Lewandowski and Stewart
Andrejz Lewandowski (VSR) produced a masterful race to take the win in the first of the Super Trofeo Grand Finals at Portimao after an incident-strewn race.
Jordan O’Brien got the best start in the 50-minute race as the cars funnelled into turn 1 where Gabriel Rindone (Leipert Motorsport), who started from the front row, had a spin in the middle of turn 3, causing havoc amongst those behind, while Cedric Leimar made contact with Claude Senhoreti, who ended up in the gravel, bringing the safety car out.
The race resumed on lap 3 and O'Brien immediately started to pull out an advantage over his rivals, but the ANSA Motorsport team were waiting until the final moment to bring the car in for the driver handover to Ron Atapattu, who was always going to lap at a slower pace than O’Brien, and this allowed Lewandowski to take the lead after the pit stop window closed.
The VSR driver had an excellent pace, but on lap 17 there was a contact in the middle of the field which saw Cyril Leimer go into a spin and stop on the racing line; as the car was facing the sun and at the top of the rise, some cars were miraculously able to avoid him, but Bart Collins (MCR Racing) hit the rear of the Autovitesse car fully head-on.
#114 Flying Lizard Motorsports, Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2, Slade Stewart
Photo by: AG Photo
There was debris and coolant everywhere, so the safety car came out again, but with six minutes remaining on the clock, the race direction opted to bring out the red flags, thus sanctioning the overall and AM class win for Lewandowski, ahead of Nikko Reger/David Staab (PPM), who maintained second until the end, and Shehan Chandrasoma (MCR Racing).
A drive-through penalty for exceeding the pit lane speed limit, converted into 40” extra on his overall time, dropped Stéphane Guerin (Arkadia Racing) from fourth to outside the points, so Alex Au (Dream Racing Motorsport) and Atapattu/O'Brien moved into the top 5.
Sixth place went to Raffaele Giannoni (Automobile Tricolore), followed by Shota Abkhazawa (Artline Team Georgia) and Martin Ryba (Brutal Fish Racing Team), who made a brilliant comeback from 19th place.
The overall top 10 was completed by Randy Sellari (Wayne Taylor Racing) and Rindone, who after his disastrous opening lap at least managed to get into the points.
Luciano and Donovan Privitelio were also sanctioned with a 40” penalty for speeding in the pit lane, so the win in the Lamborghini Cup went to Slade Stewart (Flying Lizard Motorsports), with the Rexal FFF man missing out on the podium, which was completed by François and Benoit Semoulin (SemSpeed) and Jason Gagne-Keats/Charlie Martin (Dream Racing Motorsport).
The final top 5 positions went to Gerard Van der Horst and the Privitelios, with Ofir Levy/Jon Hirshberg (US RaceTronics) sixth ahead of Kurt Wagner/Libor Dvoracek (Micanek Motorsport), Fred Roberts (NTE Sport) – who picked up a 5 second penalty for a contact with Audrius Butkevicius in the first half of the race – and Alfredo Hernandez Ortega (BDR Competition).
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