For the second time this month, TGI Team by GRT took to the Nürburgring this past weekend. From 28 to 30 August, the fourth and penultimate round of this year’s GT World Challenge Europe Powered by AWS Endurance Cup took place in the Eifel region. With the Lamborghini Temerario GT3, the Autrian squad faced an even greater challenge this time than they did 14 days ago in the DTM. In the 3-hour race, Mirko Bortolotti, Franck Perera and Sandy Mitchell put in an excellent performance, making up more than 20 places overall against all odds to finish in 18th place. In doing so, TGI Team by GRT was once again the highest-placed Lamborghini team in the highly competitive field of 55 GT3 cars.

After TGI Team by GRT had secured another top-five finish in the DTM at the Nürburgring with Mirko Bortolotti, it became apparent as early as Saturday’s practice that they were facing a more challenging situation in the Endurance Cup. In the second session, they were over one and a half seconds off the fastest time. The engineers then worked feverishly to find a set-up with a stable balance for Sunday. In qualifying that morning, the three Lamborghini Factory Drivers reduced the gap to 1.2 seconds, securing 35th on the grid.

Franck Perera took the start of the three-hour race. The Frenchman was involved in a collision through no fault of his own in the first corner, which dropped him back behind 40th place. The front of the car was also damaged as a result. Nevertheless, he fought his way back up to P27 during his stint. Shortly before the end of the first hour, the teams took advantage of a full-course yellow to make their first driver change. Sandy Mitchell got behind the wheel of the #63 Lamborghini Temerario GT3. The Briton was standing in this weekend for Maximilian Paul, who is still recovering from his accident in the DTM at the Norisring.

At the restart behind the safety car, he was in 24th place and gained two further positions shortly afterwards. During the stint, the race was neutralised twice more before restarting following a safety car period. Mitchell handled each restart with ease and made his final pit stop shortly before the start of the last hour of the race to hand over to Mirko Bortolotti. The Italian was in P20 when the fourth and final neutralisation of the race occurred around 45 minutes before the end. By the chequered flag, he had gained two further places, meaning TGI Team by GRT finished 18th after 83 laps.

For the Lamborghini Squadra Corse supported team, the racing season is slowly drawing to a close over the coming weeks. The seventh of eight race weekends in the DTM is scheduled to take place at the Sachsenring from 11 to 13 September. The season finale will follow just one month later at the Hockenheimring. In the GT World Challenge Europe Powered by AWS Endurance Cup, the championship is set to conclude from 17 to 18 October in Portimão, Portugal.

#63 TGI Team by GRT
Mirko Bortolotti (ITA) / Franck Perera (FRA) / Sandy Mitchell (GBR)
Qualifying: P35 – Race: P18

Mirko Bortolotti: “It’s been a very disappointing weekend once again. From a performance perspective, we struggled from the very first session and, despite working with the team throughout the weekend, we never managed to get ourselves anywhere near contention. In the race, the best we could do was to fight lower class entries. Our Endurance Cup campaign this year is the lowest point since entering the series in 2015. We’ve been successful in this championship ever since, so to find ourselves in this position is frustrating.”

Franck Perera: “It was no easy weekend, but it’s part of the process as we continue to develop and make progress with the new car. After such a long break without driving the Temerario GT3 since Spa, it wasn’t easy for me either, but I’m happy with the race rhythm and the fights we had out there. We did a great job recovering positions during the race and finished P18. Everyone worked well out there, and I’m proud of the effort from the whole team. For sure, this result is not enough yet, but things are improving.”

Sandy Mitchell: “Firstly, I would like to thank the team for having me at Nürburgring. I really enjoyed working with everyone and I felt like we worked well and made good progress throughout the weekend. Of course we wanted to fight for a slightly better result. In qualifying we didn’t quite have the pace we had hoped for. But after that we pulled together really well and had a solid, clean race. We maximized everything we had, made some good overtakes across all stints and had smooth pit stops from the team.”

Gottfried Grasser, Team Principal: “We realised early on that the performance gap this weekend was very significant. We were about a second off the pace, and you can’t work miracles from there. We therefore focused on keeping it clean during the race and maximising our chances that way. Unfortunately, Franck got boxed in at the start and the damage meant we lost even more top speed. Undeterred by this, we simply carried on doing our job. The crew, the drivers – everyone delivered a flawless performance. I’d also like to pay a big compliment to Sandy, who made a superb debut. We couldn’t have achieved any more under these circumstances, and given that we were almost pushed right to the back at the start, it was actually still a very good result.”