Antonio Fuoco writes his name on the prestigious Roll of Honor of the FIA GT World Cup, dominating far and wide in Macau at the wheel of the Ferrari 296 GT3.
The AF Corse driver had no rivals on the Circuito da Guia, recovering with interest what he had lost last year on the last lap, in the contact with Raffaele Marciello, second at the finish line today armed with the Rowe Racing BMW, but never with the pace to worry the Calabrian.
Sparks immediately flew at the start: Fuoco had the best starting point from the Pole Position, on the front row Yifei Ye immediately closed the door to Alessio Picariello, who having to raise his foot allowed Marciello to come alongside him at the ‘Reservoir’ left turn after the finish line: the Porsche touched slightly with the BMW and the boy from Absolute Racing ended up spinning hitting the left barriers raising the white flag, but the worst was yet to come.
Marciello took advantage of this to overtake even a dull Ye, who found himself under attack from all those following. Having also given way to Ayhançan Güven’s Porsche, the Chinese at the ‘Lisboa’ funnel was between Laurin Heinrich’s 911 on the inside and Luca Engstler’s (Absolute Corse) Lamborghini on the outside, forced to give up first when braking.
When braking, Heinrich was pushed by the Audi of Joel Eriksson (Team Phantom) and ended up on top of his Turkish teammate, who went straight into the barriers and with the Schmacher CLRT 911 in the middle it was inevitable to hit it also for Engstler and Dorian Boccolacci who followed in the Phantom Global Racing Porsche.
In the chaos, Adderly Fong’s Audi suffered a puncture on the left rear and had to return to the Uno Racing pits for repairs; Heinrich then took advantage of this to move up to fourth ahead of Eriksson and the Harmony Racing Ferraris in the hands of Ye and Yi Deng, while the Safety Car was called into action for 3 laps to allow the removal of the damaged cars.
The restart took place with 13 laps to face, Fuoco was very good at immediately extending his margin towards Marciello, bringing his margin to a couple of seconds, further back the fight for seventh position flared up – again at ‘Lisboa’ – which Laurens Vanthoor (Porsche-Absolute Racing) had to give up to the BMW of Sheldon Van Der Linde (Team WRT), imitated a few meters later by Christopher Haase in the other Audi of the Team Phantom to earn eighth position.
The lively Van Der Linde also caught up with Deng’s Ferrari, overtaking it in the same corner on lap 5 to take sixth place, with the Chinese in serious difficulty also giving way to Haase shortly after.
The last gasp came 5 laps from the end, when Edoardo Mortara, who had just moved up to 10th overtaking Benjamin Goethe, suffered an alleged technical problem on the descent leading to the ‘Melco’ hairpin: the Lamborghini of Absolute Corse locked its wheels going straight into the barriers and the Swiss appeared rather surprised and annoyed by the episode which knocked him out prematurely, without however there being any further neutralizations.
Fuoco wisely managed the large advantage he had accumulated over Marciello, capable of defending the place of honor by keeping Heinrich and Eriksson at bay, third and fourth respectively, and Ye sadly following in fifth. Post-race, however, a 10″ penalty arrived for the Swede of the R8, guilty of having triggered the accident at the start, so the Chinese Ferrari driver moved up one position.
Van Der Linde was unable to catch up with the aforementioned train and finished sixth with Deng, Vanthoor and Goethe’s McLaren-Optimum Motorsport behind him to complete the Top10, outside of which the lagging Fong remained.
FIA GT WORLD CUP – Macau: Race Ranking
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