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GT Open: Lietz-Roda dominate at Magny-Cours

© gtsport.es

The second race of the International GT Open at the Magny-Cours circuit saw Richard Lietz in the Autorlando Sport Porsche starting from pole position, followed by Patrick Pilet in the IMSA Performance Matmut Porsche. After almost coming to a stop on the start straight Lietz pulled up just before crossing the line and tried to get away.

Behind the two leading cars there was contact between what looked like the Kessel Racing #51 of Lorenzo Bontempelli, the #72 Ferrari of Stephane Ortelli and the #67 Kessel Racing Ferrari of Brian Livio. Livio continued with a flat rear tire but only managed to do a few corners before he was forced to park the car. Bontempelli suffered bodywork damage on the left front but raced on.

On lap three Alex Mortimer briefly passed the CRS Racing Ferrari of Andrew Kirkaldy, but the Scot soon regained his position, but was now under attack by the Ferrari 430 GT3 of Fred Makowiecki. Team mate Chris Niarchos in the #91 CRS Racing Ferrari came into the pit at the end of the third lap with front end damage and the car did not rejoin.

Five laps into the race Lietz was still leading, just over a second ahead of Pilet. Pierre Kaffer in the AF Corse Ferrari F430 GT2 was third, albeit 5.5 seconds behind the leader already. Lietz again showed the Porsche was the car to beat in France as he kept posting 1:41s as the only driver in the field.

A lap and a half later the #61 Ferrari driven by Jean Marc Bachelier ended up in the gravel trap and the yellow flags were waved at turn 13. After some digging and towing he rejoined the race, but was now almost two laps behind the rest of the field. Just as Bachelier rejoined it was the Kessel Racing #46 of Alessio Salucci that went off at turn 4, but like Bachelier Salucci was able to rejoin the race.
The next to spin was the Sunred SR21 of Ferran Monje. As a result of the spin Monje dropped to 18th overall.

Lietz and Pilet meanwhile pulled away from the rest of the field and on lap 9 the lap time difference was just .001s. Kaffer was already over 11 seconds down on Lietz.

Twenty minutes into the race the driver change window opened and a handful of drivers came into the pit immediately. Enrico Toccacelo – fourth in the race at that point – was one of the first drivers to come in.

Just before going into the pit Kirkaldy and Makowiecki decided to fight it out on the track and swapped positions twice on lap 15. Alex Mortimer stayed on their tail, waiting for a mistake from either one of the drivers in front of him. That mistake came when the two cars made contact at the Adelaide hairpin on the next lap. But Mortimer was unable to take advantage and only gained a position when Kirkaldy went into the box. Ten minutes later the #90 was given a drive through penalty after the team manager was called to the race director.

Meanwhile Kaffer and Lietz had already gone into the pit, handing over the lead to Patrick Pilet. One lap later the French driver came in to hand over the Autorlando Sport Porsche to Raymond Narac.

As all teams had made their mandatory stops and all cars were back on the track it was Gianluca Roda in the Autorlando Porsche who was in the lead – now over 15 seconds ahead of the IMSA Porsche of Raymond Narac and almost 30 seconds ahead of the AF Corse Ferrari of Alvaro Barba.

Roda’s lead slowly decreased as Narac and especially Barba posted quicker lap times but with ten minutes to go he still had a 14 seconds lead over Narac and 26 seconds over Barba. Even though Barba was closing in on the leader by a second on average per lap he would not have enough time to fight for the lead.

Behind the five SuperGT cars the battle for the GTS lead heated up and Jean Philippe Dayraut put some extra pressure on Peter Bamford in the Team RPM Ford GT. On the 24th lap Dayraut managed to pass the Ford GT to take the class lead. Even before the end of the lap Alexander Talkanitsa Jr was all over the Ford GT as well. Rather than overtaking him in a textbook maneuver there was contact between the two, sending the Ford wide and causing some damage to the Ferrari.

Max Wiser was the next driver to hit trouble. After taking the Aston Martin Vantage GT2 into fifth place Wiser went wide and drifted through the gravel, before spinning around over the track. Fortunately for him the gap to Dayraut was still big enough to keep his fifth place.

Three minutes before the end of the race there was more gravel flying around as the Kessel Racing Ferrari of Andrea Ceccato and the #63 of Jean-Yves Adam collided and spun through the gravel as well. On the end of the straight the Sunred SR21 of Jordi Gené came to a halt with just under two minutes left on the clock.

Roda managed to keep out of trouble and finished the race in first place after 29 laps. Raymond Narac completed a Porsche 1-2, finishing nine seconds behind the Autorlando Porsche. Barba crossed the line in third place, followed by Raffaele Giammaria at just 1.342s from the AF Corse driver.

Jean-Philippe Dayraut crossed the line first in the GTS class and kept the Team RPM Ford GT behind him. Thomas Gruber took the final podium place for Autorlando Sport, making up for the disastrous result on Saturday.