NÜRBURGRING, GERMANY – Oman’s Al-Faisal bin Khalid Al-Zubair, Austria’s Dominik Baumann and Canada’s Mikaël Grenier delivered another strong performance to finish second in the Gold Cup at round three of the 2024 Fanatec GT World Challenge powered by AWS Endurance Cup on Sunday evening.
The three-hour race became a duel between Saintéloc Racing’s Paul Evrard, Gilles Magnus and Jim Pla and the Al-Manar Racing by Getspeed Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo. Grenier drove the final stint and finished just 4.974 seconds behind Magnus’s Audi, as the two teams pulled clear in the title race. Haupt Racing’s Mercedes was third, with the CSA Racing and Tresor Attempto Racing Audis completing the Gold Cup order.
It was a good race today and very tight between the Gold Cup contenders. I feel with the package that we had coming into the weekend that a win was definitely possible. But we were just short of that. Second place here at the Nürburgring and second in the championship, just nine points behind the leaders, I believe. Anything can happen at the final two rounds.
Al-Faisal Al-Zubair
The fight for the championship is still on. We have been quite consistent now with a second, first and a second, so I am quite happy with that. We struggled with the car a bit and that got us short of the win but the Audi seemed a bit too quick here this weekend. Hopefully we will be back on the top step in Monza.
Al-Faisal Al-Zubair
Practice and qualifying
Saintéloc topped Saturday morning practice with 1min 56.043sec, ahead of Haupt Racing (1min 57.458sec), with Al-Manar fourth on 1min 58.541sec. In Sunday qualifying, Al-Zubair set 1min 56.695sec on his fourth lap to go third in Q1 behind Saintéloc’s Jim Pla and Tresor Attempto’s Lorenzo Patrese. Baumann topped Q2 with 1min 54.543sec and Grenier was third in Q3 behind Haupt Racing’s Arjun Maini and Saintéloc’s Gilles Magnus. With times combined, the Mercedes started second behind the Saintéloc Audi.