Oman’s Al-Faisal Al-Zubair, Germany’s Fabian Schiller and Zimbabwe’s Axcil Jeffries completed their first season together in the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe Powered by AWS Endurance Cup with fourth place in the Silver Cup at the Barcelona finale.
The Al-Manar Racing by HRT Mercedes-AMG GT3 crew qualified ninth for the season’s last three-hour race and gained four places to finish fourth. Victory went to Silver Cup champions Benjamin Goethe, Thomas Neubauer and Jean-Baptiste Simmenauer.
The champions passed the Garage 59 McLaren 720S GT3 of Vargas Maldonado, Dean MacDonald and Nicolai Kjaergaard in the final hour, while the Emil Frey Racing Lamborghini of Mick Wishofer, Stuart White and Konsta Lappalainen was third.
The result also confirmed fourth place for the Al-Manar Racing trio in the final Silver Cup Drivers’ Championship.
That’s the end of the season for us and definitely not the way we wanted to end it. Testing was really good and we finished first in pre-qualifying. Qualifying really sent us lower on the grid and we started P25 (all cars) and P9 nine in Silver.
Al-Faisal Al-Zubair
We moved up to P4 and 14th overall. The race was really good. I drove the first stint and went from about 25th to 20th and my team-mates did a great job to get us further up. So close to a podium, but just not quite. A good season overall and we hope to go further next year.
Al-Faisal Al-Zubair
Weekend review
The trio were eighth in Saturday morning’s free practice with a best lap of 1min 45.771sec, just under a second slower than Silver Cup pace-setters Nicolas Baert, Cesar Gazeau and Aurelian Panis.
They were fastest of the entire field in Saturday afternoon’s pre-qualifying, ahead of the three qualifying sessions on Sunday morning, with Schiller setting a 1min 45.398sec lap.
Pro Cup cars dominated Q1, where Goethe, Neubauer and Simmenauer were quickest in Silver Cup with 1min 45.457sec. The Al-Manar Racing Mercedes was 13th, less than a second off the best time.
Silver Cup runners Maldonado, MacDonald and Kjaergaard topped Q2 overall in their Garage 59 McLaren, while the Al-Manar Racing car was sixth in the short session.
That left the team needing to improve in Q3, where Maldonado, MacDonald and Kjaergaard were second overall and again fastest in Silver Cup to take pole. The Al-Manar Racing trio were seventh, and with the three sessions combined they started ninth in class.
The race
Al-Zubair and Jeffries drove well in the first two stints, lifting the Mercedes to fifth in Silver Cup after 90 minutes, and Schiller kept the momentum going in the final stint. With 30 minutes to go the car was fourth, and the German brought it home in that position.