Late race overtake hands Leipert Motorsport popular win on home soil
Sant’Agata Bolognese/Nürburgring, 30 July 2023 – Leipert Motorsport’s Brendon Leitch produced a superb fightback drive to record his first-ever Lamborghini Super Trofeo overall victory in the second race at the Nürburgring. The New Zealander caught and passed the race-long leading #16 VS Racing car of Loris Spinelli and Andrzej Lewandowski with six minutes remaining before holding off BDR Competition’s Amaury Bonduel to come home 1.535s clear at the flag.
Spinelli and Lewandowski came out on top in the Pro-Am class, beating Target Racing’s Frederik Schandorff and Alex Au who maintain their points advantage, while Gabriel Rindone made it a second home success for Leipert Motorsport with victory in the Am category. In Lamborghini Cup, honours went to Bonaldi Motorsport’s Paolo Biglieri and Petar Matić for the second day in a row.
Following a heavy rain shower in the morning, the track began to dry before the start of the formation lap. With all cars switching to the slick Hankook Ventus tyre, the race began with two laps under the safety car to allow drivers to generate heat and get used to the track conditions.
When action got underway, Bonduel initially led from Spinelli into the first corner but had to defend vigorously on the run towards turn five. Spinelli darted to the inside and was pushed to the edge of the circuit by Bonduel but in doing so, Rebelleo Motorsport’s Daan Arrow swept around the outside of turn five to take the lead of the race. Spinelli, the Pro-Am leader, was keen to give Lewandowski as big a lead as possible and moved into the overall lead, demoting Arrow to second. The order remained that way until the pit-stop window opened, with Lewandowski taking over from Spinelli and Abbie Eaton changing with Arrow. From fifth on the grid, Leitch made progress in the early stages, moving up one position ahead of the Iron Lynx machine of Ugo de Wilde. Leitch’s main title rivals Gilles Stadsbader and Mattia Michelotto – winners of race one – languished in 14th, and their race only got worse as Stadsbader went off track at turn five, hitting the barrier heavily but continuing. They finished 12th at the end. A lengthy safety car period came after an incident between Am entry Ibrahim Badawy (Lamborghini Stuttgart by DL Racing) and the Pro-Am Iron Lynx car of Nigel Schoonderwoerd at turn one. Leitch then became the first of the leading runners to make his pit-stop at the start of the window – which was delayed by three minutes following the safety car period – while Arrow and Spinelli elected to stay out. Lewandowski and Eaton returned to the track ahead of Leitch who had usurped Bonduel but were quickly chased down by the pair. Leitch dived past Eaton on the inside of turn 11, with Bonduel moving by on the inside of the final corner to take third. With six minutes remaining, Leitch repeated his move at turn 11 on Lewandowski, simultaneously covering off Bonduel’s similar attempt to sneak through. From then, Leitch was able to stretch his lead to a slender but ultimately comfortable 1.5s at the flag. Lewandowski and Spinelli claimed an overall podium in third, with Arrow and Eaton taking their first Pro class podium with fourth overall. After finishing fourth in race one, Target Racing’s Oliver Söderström and Largim Ali emerged from a frenetic battle to claim fifth, just ahead of Oregon Team’s Sebastian Balthasar and Marzio Moretti. Both crews finished ahead of the unlucky De Wilde and Rodrigo Testa, after a mistake for the #10 Iron Lynx car late in the race also left them behind the second Oregon Team car of Pedro Ebrahim and Guillem Pujeu Beya.
With Lewandowski and Spinelli comfortable Pro-Am winners, second place went to Schandorff and Au, in 10th overall. Au started the race and came into the pits early in the window to change over to the more experienced Schandorff, who produced an efficient charge through the field to finish ahead of Micánek Motorsport’s Karol Basz and Bronislav Formánek. As has been the case for much of the season in Pro-Am, there were battles aplenty throughout the field, with Scuderia Villorba Corse’s Jim Pla and Michael Blanchemain engaged in a lively scrap with the Brutal Fish Racing entry of Edoardo Liberati and Martin Ryba. Plan and Blanchemain ended up just off the podium in fourth, while Liberati/Ryba were sixth behind the Art-Line entry of Shota Abkhazava and Egor Orudzhev.
Following the disappointment of the opening race, Leipert Motorsport’s Gabriel Rindone returned to winning ways after a terrific squabble with Boutsen VDS’s Pierre Feligioni and Renaud Kuppens. Rindone led the early going from pole but lost out to Kuppens/Feligioni after the mandatory pit-stop. The #2 car held a small advantage heading into the closing minutes, but nearly lost everything as Feligioni dipped a wheel onto the grass at turn five, slewing across track and into the gravel. Miraculously, and showing superb car control, Feligioni drifted his way out of the gravel without impacting the barriers, and duly finished second. VS Racing’s Giovanni Anapoli and Piergiacomo Randazzo completed the podium in third.
For Paolo Biglieri and Petar Matić, it was a case of more of the same in race two as they came out victorious for the second successive day to cap off a memorable weekend in which they moved to the top of the Lamborghini Cup standings. From pole, they maintained their advantage over Leipert Motorsport’s Jürgen Krebs and that order didn’t change after the stops. Where the final step on the podium went was less certain, Iron Lynx’s Donovan and Luciano Privitelio initially holding third before dropping back. That elevated Brutal Fish Racing’s Charlie Martin and Jason Keats to the rostrum, with multiple class champion Gerard van der Horst again fourth.
Brendon Leitch (Leipert Motorsport) said: “I’m the only driver to finish on the podium in every race this season and we’re back in the championship lead now which is probably the biggest reason to be happy, and then to get the first win is just the icing on the cake really. We’re still getting to grips with the tyres in qualifying, so we had to move through the field in the race. I got a bit of an undercut on Spinelli and then got myself into clean air, which is where the car really works well. Then I had to be quite smart with the pass for the lead, so I sold him a little dummy and then got the inside line.”
The championship now enters the summer break, with the fourth round of the season taking place in Valencia on the weekend of 15-17 September.