PAUL RICARD, FRANCE – Oman’s Al-Faisal bin Khalid Al-Zubair, Austria’s Dominik Baumann and Canada’s Mikaël Grenier began their 2024 Fanatec GT World Challenge powered by AWS Endurance Cup campaign with second place in the Gold Cup at the season opener.
The trio brought the Al-Manar Racing by Getspeed Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo home as runners-up on the 5.791km circuit, between the Audis of Saintéloc Racing and CSA Racing.
It was a positive race weekend in general. We started off with solid practice and pre-qualifying sessions where the car felt quite good. I think it wasn’t the best weekend for the Mercedes. But, nonetheless, it was a solid result. We started qualifying with pole in our Gold class and beat some of the Pro guys as well. We were P15 overall.
Al-Faisal Al-Zubair
I started the race for the first hour and came back into the pits after a good stint. We were still leading the class. Dominik, my team-mate, went into the car for the second stint. Unfortunately, he struggled a bit with the tyre management and we went back to third place. Luckily, in the third stint, Mikaël had a very strong session and he took us back to second place. For sure, we are happy with second place and pole position in terms of points for the championship but I think the win was there for us this weekend. I think we just keep this momentum up for the next one in this championship, which is Spa 24, the biggest race of the year.
Al-Faisal Al-Zubair
The race
Al-Zubair drove the opening stint of the three-hour race, staying well clear of his Gold rivals, gaining a couple of places overall and remaining ahead of Saintéloc’s Paul Evrard despite a full-course yellow after about 40 minutes. Baumann took over under a full-course yellow and held the advantage for a time, before slipping behind Saintéloc’s Jim Pla and coming under pressure from Adam Eteki in CSA Racing’s Audi.
After the final stops Grenier was third behind Saintéloc’s Gilles Magnus and CSA’s Arthur Rougier. Magnus held on to give Saintéloc its first win of the season, but Grenier passed Rougier late on to secure Al-Manar Racing by Getspeed’s first podium of the year.
Practice and qualifying
The crew was third in Gold in Saturday’s free practice with 1min 54.696sec, behind debutants 2 Seas Motorsport (Martin Kodric, Isa Al-Khalifa and Lewis Williamson, 1min 54.026sec) and Saintéloc, then topped Gold in pre-qualifying.
In Q1 CSA’s Rougier led Gold with 1min 54.113sec, with Magnus second and Al-Zubair third. Baumann topped Gold in Q2 with 1min 53.694sec, and Grenier did the same in Q3 with 1min 53.425sec, ahead of 2 Seas’ Williamson, giving the Mercedes Gold Cup pole ahead of Saintéloc and CSA.