Making their debut in Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia, Tigani Motorsport won in Trophy Class in the hands of Marcel Zalloua and Sergio Pires.
The pairing raced aboard an older specification Mercedes AMG GT3, limiting their attack to the Trophy Class, ahead of plans to upgrade for 2023. The Bend Motorsport Park hosted round five of the GT World Challenge season with the series contesting two one hour races, with the grid determined by back-to-back qualifying sessions on Saturday morning.
A pair of practice sessions were contested on Friday with the duo leading Trophy Class on combined times and sitting ninth overall in the field. The rain arrived just before practice two, leading to a wet session which was thought to be valuable with more rain forecast for Sunday’s race.
Pires was given qualifying duties for the first session, setting the grid for race one – where he put the Mercedes eighth overall on the grid and second in Trophy Class. Zalloua was given the task of qualifying for race two where he earned pole position in Trophy Class.
Rules stipulated that the driver who qualified had to start the race and so Pires took the start of race one. It was an early battle for the class lead with Pires able to take the lead away just before the pit stop. The driver swap was completed smoothly and Zalloua jumped in the car to the end, running away comfortably to secure a class win.
Race two was scheduled for Sunday, unfortunately the forecast rain arrived in torrential fashion. Zalloua was strapped in and cars were moments away from being sent on to the track after a lengthy delay before officials deemed conditions to unsafe and cancelled the race.
As a result, Tigani Motorsport claimed the round victory in Trophy Class to cap off a dream maiden weekend in Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia.
“It was a pretty good weekend, I loved the track it’s technical and hard to master,” said Pires.
“There was plenty of overtaking opportunities and it was easy to make lots of little mistakes. There wasn’t a lot of competition in our class but it was hard fought and great to get the win.”
“Ultimately we went out just to get back in the car and have some reasonable running which definitely enjoyed over Friday and Saturday,” said Zalloua.
“It was a shame we didn’t get to race on Sunday as we were looking forward to that one, we were anticipating an even better showing with us being more used to the car again and the track.
“There are some very good drivers in the category and it was great to have some good clean racing.”