Matteo Cairoli conquered the Pro-Am class victory during the second round of the International GT Open: the 26-year-old brought home the class win of the 140 minutes endurance race on the Circuit of Spa-Francorchamps. Cairoli arrived in Spa right after finishing the 24h of the Nordschleife with a fifth place finish and debuted in the GT Sport main series at the wheel of the Porsche 992 of Huber Motorsport together with Antares Au. After a challenging and unpredictable race, the driver from Como was able to finish fourth overall, winning in the Pro-Am class.
Cairoli immediately felt at ease on the Belgian track, being the fastest in free practice and sixth overall in the second qualifying round. After combining the fastest laps of both drivers Huber Motorsport’s car started from the ninth position overall and second in its class. Cairoli jumped at the wheel of the Porsche after 40 minutes and despite spinning due to a contact with another car at the last turn, he showed to have a very promising pace, signing the fastest lap of the race in 2:19.209 and recovering a couple of positions lost during the first round of pit stops. After handing back the car to Au for his last stint the driver from Como got back into the Porsche 992 cockpit for the last phases of the race, where he managed to increase his gap from the other chasing cars, securing the win for the team. Huber Motorsport crossed the finish line second in the Pro-Am class but following the penalties handed to other cars, Cairoli and Au were promoted to the first position in their class and fourth overall.
Matteo Cairoli
“I’m really happy about this result. These two weeks have been very challenging between the 24h of the Nordschleife, the 24h of Spa tests and the endurance race of the International GT Open, but we couldn’t end them better than this. The car was really competitive already from the free practice sessions and during the race we were great in maintaining the focus and believing that we could’ve brought home a good result despite the time we lost during the first half of the race. I want to thank both my team and my teammate Antares for the great job done this weekend, it was a very difficult race and bringing home the win means a lot to me.”
