24H Spa: Triumph for Marciello, jubilation for Rahel Frey 🎥
GREAT SWISS SUCCESS 15 years after Fässler and Delétraz, Raffaele Marciello and his Mercedes team won the 24 Hours of Spa again. Rahel Frey also took a great class victory with her partners.
On the occasion of AMG's 55th birthday, Jules Gounon (F), Daniel Juncadella (E) and Raffaele Marciello from Mercedes-AMG Team AKKODIS ASP won the 74th edition of the legendary endurance classic. With his third pole position in a row at this race, the man from Ticino had himself the best starting position in the field of 66 GT3 sports cars.
Reward for flawless ride
In a race contested for once by several teams in ideal weather conditions in the Ardennes, the Mercedes #88 always remained in the leading group. After a good one-hour interruption during the night due to an accident without any casualties, three Mercedes teams as well as the fastest Ferrari and BMW seamlessly continued their hunt for overall victory.
The tipping point in favor of the team around the Swiss, French and Spaniard was a faultless drive and a perfect pit stop strategy. With a 31-second lead over the second-best Mercedes, Marciello crossed the finish line as the winner after 536 completed laps.
The sixth overall Swiss winner
After years of driving with an Italian license and being perceived only as an Italian, "Lello" thus gave Switzerland its first victory since Marcel Fässler and Jean-Denis Delétraz in the 2007 rain race (on Corvette) on the Sunday before the national holiday. Before that, only Marc Surer (with BMW) and the now married pair Lilian Bryner/Enzo Calderari on Ferrari (2004) had managed this.
No fewer than eight teams covered the same distance (3754.14 kilometers) as the winners within 24 hours. With victory in the world's biggest GT race, Jules Gounon, Daniel Juncadella and Raffaele Marciello also increased their lead in the Endurance Cup of the GT World Challenge Europe.
Raffaele Marciello: "We know how hard it is to win this race, because for many years it didn't work out and today we finally had success. For me it was a relatively quiet race, sometimes harder, sometimes easier. We were very lucky throughout the race with the car, the tires, the traffic and the track conditions. But that's also part of it!"
Rahel Frey leads women's team to success
Pure joy also surrounded a second winning team with a Swiss lineup (middle gallery). Rahel Frey, Denmark's Michelle Gatting, Belgium's Sarah Bovy and 18-year-old Frenchwoman Doriane Pin, who joined the team for this race, left all 14 class rivals behind in the Gold Cup. The Iron Dames, led by Gold driver Frey, had a dream race in the Ferrari 488 GT3 entered by Iron Lynx from Italy.
Starting from 11th in class, they stayed out of any incidents, had no technical problems and, thanks to a convincing drive by newcomer Pin, took over the class lead during the night, which they gradually extended over the following eleven hours until the finish. The "Iron Ladies" made up 32 places and thus crossed the finish line just five laps behind the overall winners in 18th place out of 43 classified teams.
Three weeks after the first podium for an all-female team in the WEC at Monza (P2), the quartet thus achieved another historic result. And for team leader Rahel Frey, who crossed the finish line as the winner, it is one of her greatest successes as a professional racer. Congratulations from the bottom of our hearts!
Podium for Philip Ellis and Emil Frey Racing
Zug's Philip Ellis on a Mercedes-AMG also made it to a podium in second place in the Pro-Am class (gallery below, 2nd from left). After an engine change after practice, the SPS team had started from the pit lane, whereupon it staged an impressive recovery.
Alain Valente rolled out at the wheel of another Mercedes on Sunday morning as the leader in the Silver Cup. The Porsche driven by Niki Leutwiler was also in front in the Pro-Am Cup in the second half of the race, when first a slip through the gravel trap and, after the pit stop, the loss of a wheel on the open track deprived him of a possible victory.
For Emil Frey Racing, a difficult race ended with a well-deserved podium in the Silver Cup. Stuart White, Konsta Lappalainen and Tuomas Tujula brought their Lamborghini Huracán (lower gallery center) home in third class position and 16th overall.
Giacomo Altoè, Léo Roussel and Arthur Rougier also made it to the finish line in a solid 14th place. The third Lambo with the strongest drivers, Mirko Bortolotti, Albert Costa Balboa and Jack Aitken, was a promising fourth on the grid but retired after an accident during the night.
No luck for the Swiss Audi works drivers
A lot of undesirable things were experienced by the strongest Audi Sport teams featuring the three Swiss factory drivers Ricardo Feller, Nico Müller (Gallery right) and Patrick Niederhauser. They were fast but experienced all the adversities of such a race.
After some big time losses and subsequent catch-up chases, they at least finished in 12th (Feller), 17th (Müller with Valentino Rossi) and 19th (Niederhauser with compatriot/private rider Lucas Légeret).
Junior Julien Apothéloz's Porsche had to be parked in the third hour of the race after an accident that was not his fault. His brand colleagues Mauro Calamia and Dominik Fischli came over the distance with their teams in positions 25 and 29. Only 39 of the 66 cars that started also managed to do so.
(Photos: DPPI)
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