One weekend – two races. At the last weekend team SPS automotive performance had to get through two races at two different venues. At Autódromo Internacional do Algarve the team competed with the SPS Mercedes AMG GT3 at the Hankook 24H Portimao. The bolide with the “Cool Aviation” livery and the start number 24 was driven by the Swiss quartet Alexandre Coigny, Iradj Alexander, Richard Feller und Antonin Borga.
About 3.000 kilometers away at the Hungaroring, team SPS participated at the fourth round of the International GT Open Season 2018. Here they brought the Mercedes AMG GT3 #20 with the Richard Mille design on the track. The drivers Tom Onslow-Cole and Valentin Pierburg were highly motivated at the testsessions and free practices, where they got P4 and P6 against the 28 cars strong field. At the first qualifying they’ve enhanced their position to the pole position in the ProAm class and P2 overall for the first race at Saturday! So, the race one started with Tom Onslow-Cole, because he completed the qualifying. After a perfect stint, Valentin Pierburg took over the Mercedes and absolved the first win for the SPS team at this race weekend! Finally P1 in ProAm and P2 at the overall ranking! A perfect race and a fantastic result, which is very important for the overall ranking: the gap from Valentin Pierburg and Tom Onslow-Cole towards the leading duo Crestani/Ramos at the ProAM-Championship decreased to one point! The second race at Sunday was completed with P19.
Also in Portimao the SPS team showed an awesome performance: After P1 at the overall ranking in the free practice, the SPS Mercedes AMG GT3 got pole position after the qualifying as well! After a perfect lap with 1.43.912 from Antonin Borga, they had a perfect starting position for the long-distance race, which began at 15 o’clock local time. Antonin Borga did the start and overtook the car after approximately 2 hours to Alexandre Coigny on leading position. After 9 hours we had a red flag, and the curious reason was, that a technical defect at the refuel-area for all teams, caused a flood of the whole area with fuel… After this interruption the race continued, the night was over and it was still a long way to go for the SPS Mercedes AMG GT3, which was on P2 in AM class at this moment. But the car runs perfectly and the quartet reached successfully position 2 on the AM-class. Congratulations to Alexandre Coigny, Iradj Alexander, Richard Feller and Antonin Borga!
In summary the team SPS automotive performance from Willsbach had a really successful weekend!
Team manager Stephan Sohn:
“Two races at one weekend on two different circuits, approximately 3.000 km away from each other, is a major challenge. Due to the perfect preparation and the highly motivated teams at both race tracks we could achieve two fantastic successes: Pole positions and places on the podium in Portimao as well as in Budapest testify the gorgeous team performance! A great “Thank you” goes out to the whole team, the drivers and all involved persons for this team effort!”