Motor Girls

After a win and a crash in the sprint races, the team around Carrie Schreiner was still able to achieve a top ten result in the endurance race.

Once again, the weather conditions in the GT Winter Series were not ideal for racing. On Friday, it became clear that racing on Saturday would be impossible due to the weather. Consequently, the entire Saturday of the Winter Series was canceled. The result was a very condensed Sunday.

Ariel Levi took over qualifying duties for the Attempto Racing team early in the morning. The decision proved to be the right one, as he secured pole position in the first race and second place for the second sprint race.

Levi starts the race confidently with 11 GT3 cars behind him. The first corner sees little competition, and he has the second completely under control. Blum’s No. 64 HRT Mustang is right on Levi’s tail, but he can’t mount an effective attack. Levi understands how to exploit the Audi’s advantages in the corners, preventing the Mustang from capitalizing on its straight-line strength.

At the start of the third lap, the No. 112 Porsche spun off the track in Turn 1, but after a restart, it was able to continue and regained speed. The No. 128 car was less fortunate. After nine minutes, it spun into the gravel and couldn’t get out. A safety car was deployed. At the restart in the second half of the race, two Mustangs were now behind Levi’s Audi. However, his victory was never seriously threatened. He continued to pull away from the Mustangs before they entered the long straight. The race almost came to an early end in the penultimate lap. Shibata spun his Ferrari into the gravel and got stuck. A safety car would have secured the victory for Levi. However, since it was a relatively slow section of the track and the field was already entering the final lap, race control decided against deploying one. For Levi, however, it made no difference, and he secured his first GT3 victory in only his second GT3 race.

For race two, Carrie Schreiner started from a promising second place. Next to her on pole position was the No. 74 Mustang. At the start, she was overtaken by the competition and had to fight to maintain her position. The battle didn’t deter her from showing her fighting spirit on the approach to Turn 2. Although there was already a small gap to the leader, she attempted a divebomb to overwhelm him. Unfortunately, it worked too well. The Mustang hadn’t anticipated the attack and entered the corner on its usual line. Schreiner was too fast for the now-closed gap and collided heavily with the Mustang’s rear end. The Mustang came to a stop after a few more meters. Schreiner suffered severe damage to the front of her car. She dropped to the back of the GT3 class and ultimately had to retire the car in the pits on the second lap.

Schreiner starts the final race from tenth place, with the Mustang from the second race behind her. She plays it safe in the first lap, maintaining her tenth position. Shibata in the Ferrari ahead of her can’t match the pace of the leaders and noticeably holds Schreiner back. She still struggles to overtake the Japanese driver, as he is very experienced in the Ferrari and knows how to defend his position. After six minutes, the breakthrough comes. In the infield of the track, she manages to pull alongside the Ferrari and then overtake it. Now six seconds behind the next GT3 car, she immediately picks up the pace significantly, gaining several seconds per lap.

The rest of the recovery work is done for her by car number 89. It crashes in Turn 12, triggering a Safety Car period. The 27-year-old German is now right on the tail of the number 111 Mercedes. There are 33 minutes left on the clock at the restart. She can’t get past it. A second chance doesn’t present itself immediately, as Shibata is hit by a Cup car and subsequently gets stuck in the gravel. This results in another Safety Car and a postponement of the pit stop window. The second restart now takes place with 26 minutes remaining. Again, Schreiner can’t use this opportunity to overtake the Mercedes. On the following lap, she makes her mandatory pit stop and hands over to Levi.

Levi drops several positions during his pit stop and rejoins the race behind Scharndorf in the Cup 4 Lamborghini. It takes Levi several laps to execute his overtaking maneuver. Finally, Scharndorf runs wide in the final corner, allowing Levi to overtake on the inside, but he has less momentum due to the tight line. The Lamborghini counters on the long straight but has a slower exit from Turn 1. Levi uses this to his advantage, finally squeezing past the Lamborghini in Turn 2 and maintaining his lead.

Levi is now in 10th place overall, ninth in the GT3 class, behind the leader of the Lamborghini Cup. The latter is rapidly closing the gap to Hütter’s GT3 Lamborghini and manages to overtake it. Levi does the same a lap later and battles the Cup car for 8th place overall. This battle is essentially already decided, as car number 333 has received a penalty for an insufficiently short pit stop and will lose the position to Levi anyway.

With seven minutes remaining in the race, things get hairy again. A car gets stuck in the gravel at Turn 11, and the safety car is deployed once more. The recovery is quick, but the field takes too long to catch up. The delay is prolonged, leaving only one lap after the restart. Levi is unable to make any further progress on this lap, as he is held up by lapped traffic. The Attempto Racing Team crosses the finish line in ninth place overall, but the penalty of car 333 helps them to position eighth. They also hold the same position in the GT3 class. After the accident in the second race, the team has at least managed to limit the damage.

Attempto Racing has no further test races planned in the GT Winter Series. Carrie Schreiner’s next outing with the team will be at Circuit Paul Ricard as part of the prestigious GT World Challenge Europe.