In a race that saw the Safety Car right from the early stages, due to persistent rain, Marc VDS Racing BMW Z4 No.3 PRO entry of Bas Leinders, Markus Palttala and Maxime Martin took the honours in the opening round of the Blancpain Endurance Series in treacherous conditions at Monza. Marc VDS Racing’s Leinders and Palttala, started out the team’s outing and Martin finished the job to bring the Belgian team entry home by over 15 seconds.
Second was the No.2 Belgian Audi Club Team WRT Audi R8 LMS of Marco Bonanomi, Edward Sandstrom and Laurens Vanthoor and third place went to the No.13 KRK Racing Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 of Koen Wauters, Karl Wendlinger and Anthony Kumpen.
MotoGP’s favourite son Valentino Rossi, in his maiden outing in competitive GT Racing, finished 18th overall, racing a Kessel Racing Ferrari 458 Italia GT3 #46 with his best friend Alessio Salucci ( known to his friends as just Uccio). It is worth mentioning that Rossi’s was the only two man driver team and started out 10th from the grid. The #46 team had qualified 5th in class and 10th overall yesterday in what was again a drenched track with a rush hour qualifying, thanks to the limited track time that the rains were considerate enough to give the team.