Maximilian Buhk and Alon Day defeated the WRT Audis to win the FIA GT Series championship race at Zandvoort in their HTP Gravity Charouz Mercedes.
German driver Buhk got the jump on WRT’s Stephane Ortelli at the start of the race to take the lead, before the red flags were flown following a heavy crash for Cesar Campanico, the Novadriver Audi turning sharp right under braking for the first corner and impacting the barrier.
The stoppage was needed not only to make repairs to the armco, but also to provide medical attention to a photographer who was stood behind the barrier at the time of the impact.
After the restart, Buhk maintained the lead of the race and handed over first position to co-driver Day, who went on to take victory by 6.667 seconds.
Ortelli’s co-driver Laurens Vanthoor just held on to second, three tenths of a second ahead of the sister car that Frank Stippler had taken over from Edward Sandstrom.
Karun Chandhok and Jan Seyffarth brought their Mercedes home in fourth place for Seyffarth Motorsport, ahead of the Grasser Racing Lamborghini of Hari Proczyk and Dominik Baumann. Alvaro Parente had been fifth in Sebastien Loeb‘s McLaren before stopping in the final minutes with a mechanical issue. The car had started at the back after retiring from pole position on Saturday.
Proczyk and Baumann took the Pro-Am honours, followed across the line by the two Pro Brazilian BMWs of Ricardo Zonta/Sergio Jimenez and Allam Khodair/Caca Bueno. Bueno had been handed a drive-through penalty for an overtake under yellow flags on the third WRT Audi of Niki Mayr-Melnhof and Rene Rast, which retired after a transmission fault left Rast with no drive just after taking the wheel.
RJN Nissan pair Lucas Ordonez and Alex Buncombe were eighth overall and second in Pro-Am ahead of local driver Melroy Heemskerk, who came in to partner BMW India‘s Armaan Ebrahim this weekend. Matheus Stumpf completed the top ten for Rodrive, having switched from Ford to Lamborghini and had Patrick Cunha come in alongside him for Zandvoort.
