It was a tough weekend for MERTEL Motorsport with the GT Cup Europe in Spa-Francorchamps. But with definite highlights in race 1 and Luca Ludwig and Ivan Velasco still leading the Championship with one point …
Let’s start with the best: On Saturday Luca Ludwig in the green 488 took convincing pole and had a perfect start into race 1. After the drivers change, Ivan Velasco fought back the lead in a great final fight and they took their second win of the season.
The Mechanics and Engineers worked hard to provide fast cars and set-up but the other MERTEL Ferraris struggled with a lot of incidents on the track and unluckily a lot of the MERTEL Motorsport Ferrari did not finish the races on Saturday and Sunday, even if started in good positions like on no. 84 Arturo Melgar in P5 on Sunday who had to retire after an incident in turn 1 and could not even hand over to Stefano Bozzoni.
The Spa weekend for Alvaro Lobera / Fernando Navarrete on no. 81 was not easy, the team changed the gearbox before the qualifying on Saturday what made a start possible – even from P5 – but unfortunately Lobera could not finish the race, three laps shy to the finish.
Leon Chen and Mark Speakerwas on the colourful Ferrari no.82 were really unlucky, not being able to finish both races due to let it be named “friendly fire”. Which was particularly frustrating.
The no. 83 with Alba Vasquez / Laura van den Hengel – also with their first time at this famous circuit – did solid races with clear improvement in race 2 and raced a hard line.
Anny Frosio and George Cabezas proved again the good driver combination, starting P6 in Saturday and Anny fought well not to give up too many positions. The no. 85 also could not finish race 2 because of a tyre puncture.

Now we look forward to the next race. Everyone of the team and drivers will concentrate to give their best to eradicate the bad luck and come back with a good mind-set to attack again and successfully in Paul Ricard in July.

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