Weerts, van der Linde win for BMW and WRT in GTWC Misano Race 1 after lap 1 pileup

Credit: SRO/JEP

Charles Weerts and Kelvin van der Linde have won race 1 of the GT World Challenge Europe (GTWC EU) Sprint Cup round at Misano in the No.32 WRT BMW, after a pileup on lap 1 gave them the lead. The race finished under Full-Course Yellow after the No.555 CSA McLaren had an issue with five minutes to go.

Bastian Buus and Ricardo Feller in the No.80 Lionspeed GP Porsche were second, with Buus fending off Maro Engel in the No.48 Winward Mercedes in the dying laps. The German finished off the podium alongside teammate Lucas Auer.

Gold was won by Alex Aka and Dylan Pereira in the No.99 Attempto Audi from fifth place, with Ignacio Montenegro and Mattise Lismont in the No.30 WRT BMW winning in Silver from 11th, meaning it was two WRT victories in one race.

Bronze was closely contested, with the No.12 GetSpeed Mercedes of Gabriel Rindone and Fabian Schiller winning a late race battle involving all of the top four cars in class.

As it happened

We had qualifying for Race 1 earlier on Saturday afternoon, with Valentino Rossi in the No.46 WRT BMW coming out on top to take his first ever pole position in the GTWC, at the only track where he has stood on the top step of the podium (three times).

His biggest challenger was the Silver No.66 Attempto Audi, with youngster Andrea Frassineti making it an all Italian front-row. Third was Ricardo Feller in the Sprint championship leading and Spa 24 Hour winning No.80 Lionspeed GP Porsche.

Rossi led the field to green and we didn't even make it to turn 1 before we had an incident. Rossi and Frasinetti were slow off the line, and both squeezed Feller behind, both hitting him and losing control. Rossi was able to keep moving, but the Audi spun across the track and collected the No.3 Verstappen Racing of Daniel Juncadella. Both the Audi and Mercedes could not continue.

Charles Weerts in the No.32 WRT BMW got away well from fourth place and was able to leave all of this incident behind him, taking the lead of the race. Marvin Dienst in the No.87 Winward Mercedes was second, and leading Bronze with the No.12 GetSpeed car of Fabian Schiller third - second in Bronze. Rossi fell to fourth, ahead of Lucas Auer in the No.48 Winward Mercedes, with Feller in sixth.

Weerts had a very good restart lap, putting a gap of 1.5 seconds between himself and the Bronze leaders. Behind him, Auer tried a lunge on Rossi before the long back straight, but thought better of it on the exit.

That left him vulnerable to Feller behind, who was all over the back of the Mercedes, allowing Rossi a small bit of rest from his mirrors as he looked to get past the two Bronze Merecedes ahead. But Feller's attempts put him under pressure from Tommaso Mosca in the No.51 Gold leading Ferrari.

The Spa 24 stand-out tried a brave move around the outside of the Porsche through the quick double-left at the end of the back straight, but he had to back out.

With 20 minutes elapsed in the race, the No.46 and No.222 cars were both given 10 second penalties for jumping the start. That was Rossi and Cian Jewiss in the No.222 Mercedes, third in Bronze.

Back at the front, Weerts had opened a three second gap to Dienst, but the Bronze entry began to catch the leader. The gap was back down to about a second and a half when the pit window opened, and Weerts pulled into the pits. Rossi, Engel and Mosca followed him in from the lead group, with the former of which serving the penalty.

Once everyone else had pit, the No.32 did come back out in front in the hands of Kelvin van der Linde, ahead of Bastian Buus in the No.80 and Maro Engel in the No.48 Mercedes. The No.69 Emil Frey Ferrari was fourth in the hands of Ben Green, with Alex Aka in the No.99 Attempto Audi leading Gold from fifth. The No.46 dropped to sixth, now with Max Hesse at the wheel.

The Bronze cars had to take an extra 14 seconds in their pit stops, as per regulations, so both of the Mercedes that were in the top three cycled backwards. The No.87 that Dienst had handed over to teammate Rinat Salikhov cycled even further backwards, as the car lost all power briefly.

They lost the Bronze lead to the No.12 now driven by Gabriel Rindone, and fell down to 20th before Salikhov could get the car moving again. But the No.87 ended up not too far behind Rindone, able to fight for the lead once again with just over 10 minutes remaining.

Credit: SRO/JEP

With five minutes to go we had the races second interruption, with the No.555 McLaren stopped on the side of the track, and in the gravel. A recovery vehicle was needed to remove the car, and we never went back to green flag racing.

Weerts crossed the line to win, with Buus able to stay ahead of Engel for third. Fourth was Ben Green in the No.69 Ferrari, with the Gold winning No.99 Audi in fifth. Sixth was the No.46 BMW after their penalty, with the No.51 Ferrari seventh (second in Gold). The No.31 BMW was eighth, No.84 Audi ninth and the No.50 Ferrari rounded out the top 10.