until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
Marcell Csincsik won the first sprint race of the top split of the GT Challenge Series, the feeder championship to the GT Pro Series, while the feature race won by Michi Hoyer.
Simulating the real world weather at Silverstone at the time of the races meant drivers had to deal with the challenge of a wet track.
In this, the top of four splits in the GT Challenge Series, Csincsik excelled in the rain and took pole position by just under four tenths of a second over Lorenzo Arisi in second and Nico Barclay in third.
Arisi’s good starting position was undone slightly as he ran wide at the first corner and after rejoining the track at Farm corner in third he was then the victim of a forceful pass by Polesny which demoted Arisi down to fourth.
The majority of the action in the sprint race involved the positions around 10th, as the starting grid for the 45-minute main race is determined by the finishing results for the main race with the top 10 from the sprint race reversed.
Hoyer quickly moved up from his starting position of 13th and moved up to 10th, the position needed to start on pole position for the main race, within five minutes.
That became ninth after Polesny’s race ended abruptly with a massive side on collision into the barriers just before the pitlane. It was a heavy enough crash for his rear wing to come flying off.
Glatter, Sinik and Shepherd were those battling for the all-important 10th position with Henri Sinik and Sascha Glatter fighting intensely in the final few minutes.
Sinik ended up pulling off an impressive overtake down the inside of Stowe, but the move turned out to be unnecessary since Glatter had to enter the pits to serve a penalty for breaking track limits too many times.
Hoyer proved to be the star of the sprint race as he even passed Vlad Tokarev on the inside of Luffield for eighth place on the final lap.
It was Csincsik who won the sprint race unopposed and even had the time and confidence to drift across the line and take his race win.
The 45-minute long main race was littered with pit stops in a race format where pit stops are not required. This trend kicked off with polesitter and race leader Sinik as well as Barclay both driving through the pits only nine minutes into the race for breaking track limits.
That handed the race lead over to Hoyer, Vlad Tokarev second, Williams JIM Esports driver Adam Pinczes third and Michal Sedlacek in fourth.
Later in the race the feeder Williams Esports driver also had a drive-through penalty for the same reason.
Sprint race winner Csincsik had a tough first few laps and appeared to be suffering with damage, likely suspension related. He voluntarily entered the pits after dropping outside of the top 10.
Of those drivers who kept it clean, Arisi was one of the quickest as he found he way up to 6th with two-thirds of the race still to run.
He fought his way up to third place as Tokarev had a lack of rear-end traction on the exit of Luffield which gave Arisi the momentum needed to secure the final podium spot. Tokarev was later handed a drive-through penalty.
Penalties continued to change the grid order but shockingly there were two engine failures that happened almost simultaneously. The biggest of those was for Christian Malghera who was running in fifth before his car let go on him.
Hoyer took the chequered flag in the feature race with Sedlacek second andArisi in third.
Every race in the GT Challenge Series is important as after every two races the fastest drivers from each of the four splits of 30 racers move up a split and the slowest five move down.
So those drivers who failed to deliver in Silverstone will need to step up their game for the second round in the Nurburgring, especially for those drivers who want to stay in this prestigious top split.
The next GT Challenge Series round will take place on March 23 with the second GT Pro Series round taking place one week earlier and is available to watch live, or back in full, on The Race’s YouTube channel.
