Spa-Francorchamps / The International GT Open, the successful European GT series, recently called on the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, where Enzo Ide and Maxime Soulet, with the Aston Martin Brussels by GPR Racing team, scored a third and second place in the GTS class. Notwithstanding the fact that this fast Belgian team have only competed in two meetings, with two podium places and victories to boot, they can still become champion in the GTS class. The present leader, the Italian Lorenzo Bontempelli, in fact only has eight points more than the Belgians in the Aston Martin Vantage V12 GT3 and there are still forty units to be shared out during the races in Monza and at the beginning of November in Barcelona.
The International GT Open is a European championship for GT2 and GT3 cars, with 8 weekends, mainly held on great European F1 circuits. The makes represented include Aston Martin, Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren and Mercedes. The International GT Open is about to experience a nail biting finish. With still 4 hours of intense racing to come, on the F1 circuits of Monza and Barcelona, nothing is decided as yet. In the overall classification, a combination of the former GT1 and GT2 cars and the GTS category, where we find the GT3s, a top-5 for Maxime Soulet and Enzo Ide is feasible, but more especially a title in the well-filled GTS (GT3) category is not an unrealisable objective. The difference between the leader and the Belgians is a mere 8 points, where n fact in each of the four races 10 points are still to be earned.
Enzo Ide: “It was in fact a journalist who had made a quick calculation and had mailed us after the Spa meeting. I was rather surprised, seeing we had not competed in many meetings, but as there had been 7 or 8 different winners in the other races and a fair number of teams had already been on the podium, the points had been quite spread out. That also means that nobody had scored heavily, where in fact we had clinched 34 out of 40, an exception in fact. The good news for us as also the team is that we can still become champion in an international series, even though we had not set ourselves that objective. Now that the situation is such we will be heading off to Monza, where during the coming weekend we will be going flat out for it, and should that succeed and we come ever closer to the lead, or even unexpectedly find ourselves leading the classification, we’ll then see what could still happen in Barcelona. In any case I have always been somewhat of a fan of this championship and now I’m even keener than ever to go flat out for victory on Saturday and Sunday together with Maxime (Soulet).”
ADAC GT
In the meanwhile Enzo Ide, together with Phoenix Audi and Nico Verdonck has also become acquainted with the ADAC GT, the renowned German championship. Last weekend the two Belgians competed in an Audi R8 LMS in the final round of the season. During race 1 Enzo Ide was nudged at the start, with as outcome difficulty to achieve a good result. During the second race Nico Verdonck also experienced an accident and lost valuable time. A final 13th place was the result following a tumultuous race.
Enzo Ide: “We definitely could have made the top-10! For our first race together it was obviously an enjoyable experience. The car had some additional ballast because we were competing guest-drivers, so all in all it was not easy. On the other hand it was a great weekend and I thank Phoenix-Racing for their confidence this season.”