Circuit: Six champions from Switzerland 🎥
TITLEFLUT Grégoire Saucy has been crowned "Formula Alpine" champion ahead of schedule. Emil Frey Racing celebrated with its Swiss driver trio in the GT World Challenge and Frédéric Yerly at the Nürburgring. Only in the DTM was there no happy ending for Müller and Ellis. Wild West scenes at the Nürburgring with the collision of the two championship leaders in turn 1 [...]
Wild West scenes at the Nürburgring with the collision of the two championship leaders in turn 1 and the new champion Maxi Götz at the end as the laughing third.
Nico Müller and Philip Ellis would have loved to finish the DTM at the Norisring with a podium. But the driver from Bern only finished 8th and 15th with the Audi R8 LMS from Team Rosberg. Thus, Müller closes a disappointing season for him with only one podium in tenth place at Monza.
His pace was actually good enough for a much better outcome in both races, but they went badly for him - which is typical on the Nuremberg street circuit, which invites many collisions and spins.
Support for the DTM's first GT3 champion
Philip Ellis finished a meager tenth in the Winward Racing Mercedes, even though he was on course for the podium. In race 1 on his 29th birthday, a competitor turned him over while he was in second place; in the final race, the Zug native, who was leading for a time, played water boy for his brand colleague Maxi Götz and then finished fourth.
Götz secured victory in the first race under his own steam and, with the help of the faster Mercedes drivers, in the second race, which took him past the brawlers Liam Lawson (Ferrari) and Kelvin van der Linde (Audi) to the top of the standings and the rather unexpected championship title. Meanwhile, Ellis slipped from fifth to seventh place at the final two DTM weekends at Hockenheim and Nuremberg.
In the DTM Trophy for GT4 drivers, Lucas Mauron (Audi R8) finished the season in fifth and sixth place, Yann Zimmer (BMW M4) in seventh and fourth. Thanks to his strong second half of the season, the driver from St. Gallen finished the championship in a good fourth place, Zimmer is seventh overall.
First championship title in the career of Grégoire Saucy
Swiss drivers and their teams therefore felt more like celebrating at other racing venues. In the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine at Mugello, a fifth-place finish in the first race was enough for Grégoire Saucy to win the title early.
By then, the man from the Jura had won eight races and built up a nice points cushion. Saucy was once again on the podium in third place the following day. The three other Swiss riders Léna Bühler, Jasin Ferati and Axel Gnos remained without a points classification.
Emil Frey Racing achieves final season goals
All's well that ends well for Emil Frey Racing in Barcelona. At the fifth endurance race and thus the last round of the GT World Challenge Europe, the Safenwil-based team put two of its three Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo cars in the top 8 (see Ranking list) and thus successfully defended their third final place in the Endurance Teams Cup.
With laps behind, Ricardo Feller, Alex Fontana and Rolf Ineichen only finished 20th, but this was enough to secure the Silver Cup title for the team and its three Swiss drivers. Two weeks earlier, this had already been achieved in the Sprint Cup.
Victory in on the GP circuit of Catalonia went to the Mercedes trio of AKKA ASP, which included Raffaele Marciello. The Ticino native, competing under the Italian flag, thus finishes the championship in second place behind the Belgians Dries Vanthoor and Charles Weerts on WRT's Audi R8.
A Swiss champion and several class winners at the Nürburgring
At the final round of the Nürburgring Endurance Series, Manuel Amweg finished his first race this year with the winner's crown. With two German partners, the man from Aargau prevailed on a KTM X-Bow in the SPX class, which was occupied by two GTX and two GT4 sports cars from Austria.
Amweg's brother-in-law Frédéric Yerly and his German colleagues on a VW Golf TCR had to settle for second place in the SP3T class behind their Max Kruse Racing teammates. Afterwards, however, the man from Freiburg was the sole overall winner in the class annual standings. Yerly was already the TCR champion of the VLN in 2019.
Solo victories went to Manuel Metzger with his team on a Porsche GT3 in the SP Pro class and the family quartet Kroll/Prinz with the well-tried BMW M3 CSL in H4.
