Matteo Cairoli finished the 4 Hours of Aragón, the third round of the European Le Mans Series, in seventh place. The driver from Como, who arrived at the Spanish round as a championship leader in the class LMGTE, was back at the wheel of Iron Lynx’s Porsche 911 RSR together with Claudio Schiavoni and Matteo Cressoni. During the first weekend back from the summer break, Cairoli showed a pretty good pace right from the beginning, topping the two free practice sessions with a timing of 1:57.265. The qualifying round, with Schiavoni at the wheel of Iron Lynx’s car, saw the Porsche of the Italian team finishing tenth, also due to the 25kg of ballast that it had to serve after the two first rounds’ results, and to the torrid hot weather conditions that characterized the weekend.
Schiavoni was the protagonist of a very chaotic first stint that saw him racing against his main opponents for a long time while avoiding dangerous crashes; when the sun started to settle down Cressoni jumped in the car and, after a pretty good middle stint where he managed to gain some positions, handed the wheel to Cairoli for the last hour of racing. The driver from Como immediately started gaining precious time with the hope of overtaking the cars he had in front to jump back at the top; however, with only an hour to go and without any safety-car which could have nullified the gap from the others, he didn’t manage to improve the position he found himself in after the last pit stop. Cairoli therefore crossed the finish line seventh at the end of a race full of battles, only nine seconds away from the podium.
After the Spanish round, Iron Lynx lost a few positions in the team standings: the Italian team is now fourth but with a gap of only nine points. The next European Le Mans Series’ race will be in Belgium, where the 4 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps will go underway on September 24.
Matteo Cairoli:
“It wasn’t an easy weekend: Motorland is a very tricky track and the ballast that we had complicated our work. However, I’m proud of our performance: we did a pretty smooth race without many mistakes, which allowed us to gain some positions after the qualifying round and to bring home important points for the team championship, which is very tight this year. I want to thank both Iron Lynx for the support during the weekend and my teammates Claudio and Matteo. The next race of the championship will be in Spa, a track where I’ve already collected two wins and where I can’t wait to go back to.”
