Fourth victory of the season for championship leaders Salman Owega and Elias Seppänen. Hites finishes second in the Grasser Lamborghini after a captivating finale. Alain Valente and Ralf Aron make it onto the podium for the second time.
A brace for Salman Owega (Cologne) and Elias Seppänen (FIN): the Mercedes-AMG duo from Landgraf Motorsport triumphed in race eight of this season’s ADAC GT Masters and claimed their second win in a row at the Sachsenring on Sunday. “I am overjoyed with the two wins and the points haul this weekend. Up until now, I had always experienced the victories from the pit wall. This time I was able to take the chequered flag myself for the first time, which felt great. Towards the end of the race, I was struggling with vibrations in the car, which unsettled me. However, my race engineer on the radio kept me cool and I avoided taking any major risks,” said Owega. Second place went to Benjamin Hites (CHL) and Marco Mapelli (I/both GRT Grasser-Racing-Team) in a Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo2. Alain Valente (CH) and Ralf Aron (EST/both Haupt Racing Team) took third place in another Mercedes-AMG GT3.
Spectators around the undulating 3.645-kilometre circuit in Hohenstein-Ernstthal watched an exciting race in summery temperatures of 28 degrees Celsius on Sunday afternoon. Maximilian Götz (Uffenheim/Haupt Racing Team) started from pole position. The Mercedes-AMG Performance driver defended his position at the start and soon started to pull away from the international field. Team-mate Petru Umbrarescu (RO) took over at the wheel a little more than half way into the race. However, he was handed a drive-through penalty by race control for an infringement during the pit stop. Owega inherited the lead and went on to lift the winners’ trophy together with Seppänen for the first time in the current ADAC GT Masters season.
Hites and Valente were embroiled in a thrilling battle for second place in the final laps of the 60-minute sprint race. Nürburgring winner Hites had the upper hand and crossed the finish line a little over three tenths of a second ahead of Valente. “It was a real nail-biter for me. My rear tyres were giving me trouble and deteriorated more and more as the race progressed. For this reason, I decided to take a more conservative approach and avoided the curbs. I am relieved that we did enough to take second place,” said Hites. Third place for Valente and Aron was their second podium result, having also made it onto the rostrum after race five of the season at the Nürburgring. “We dropped back from second to fifth place at the start. We decided to come into the pits early and go for the undercut. Later, the car suddenly switched into neutral during an overtaking manoeuvre and I lost places again. However, I did not allow that to knock me out of my stride and was able to get the maximum out of the race with third place,” said Valente, summing up his Sunday afternoon.
Eduardo Coseteng (PHL) and Ben Green (GBR) ended the race in fourth place in the Schubert BMW. Rounding out the top five with their best result in the ADAC GT Masters were Lithuanians Jonas Gelžinis and Jonas Karklys (both NordPass by Juta Racing) in an Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo2. Sixth place went to Mercedes-AMG drivers Umbrarescu and Götz. Jannes Fittje (Huber Motorsport) crossed the finish line seventh. The man from Langenhain shares the cockpit of the Porsche 911 GT3 R with Nico Menzel (Kelberg). Finn Gehrsitz (Stuttgart) and Sven Müller (Bingen/both Team Joos by Racemotion) were eighth. The Porsche duo were running second at one point, but dropped back after a puncture and an additional pit stop.
The ADAC GT Masters is at the Red Bull Ring in Austria from 22nd to 24th September for its only event outside Germany this season. The iconic GT series then heads to the season finale at the Hockenheimring Baden-Württemberg from 20th to 22nd October. Both events take place on the high-profile DTM platform. The two wins at the Sachsenring have given championship leaders Owega and Seppänen a 31-point advantage over Gehrsitz and Müller.
