It was a weekend of mixed feelings. Our very first endurance race left us with joy and disappointment at the same time.

An incredible qualifying with P1, P3 (PROAM) and P3 (AM) showed how fast the cars and especially we as a team are! What a team effort, unbelievable.

Car #80 with Ivan and Jorge finished 2nd in PROAM, keeping the top of the championship!
Axel and Luca Ludwig in the #81 were heading for P1 in PROAM as the race got ended after 1.5 hours by a hard crash caused by a GT3 from the GT OPEN class.
Stefano Bozzoni and Fernando Navarrete in ca #19 had a podium in sight as a broken cooler finished their race in the pits. Heartbreaking for the team.

Our very first GT CUP EUROPE season. Three cars. Incredible drivers. Leading the championship. Huge respect from everybody around. First endurance race. Maximum number of team members. New team members. 6 months ago – not even thinkable.

We lost the #81 to a stupid crash which was far from our influence. We lost the #19 due to a technical defect we could not anticipate before. Yes – we messed up the first pitstop. So what, we did 8 other great ones! Some processes were unclear – so what, it was our first endurance race. With THREE cars, SIX drivers!

And among all this chaos on track – we brought home the #80 on P2 in class and P3 overall! What an amazing success!! We, the MERTEL rookie team! The drivers lead the Championship, the team is even points with VOLCANO Motorsport and ahead of Q1-trackracing (2022 Champion!!).

Nevertheless, leaving Spa with a podium and the championship lead makes us extremely happy and pays off the hard work done during the last weeks. We are ready for the next races and can’t wait to join GT Cup in Paul Ricard.

But in the meantime – next stop – Ferrari Challenge LeMans!