Jerez (Spain), June 22 (IANS): India's Aditya Patel and his Portuguese team-mate Cesar Campanico finished overall second and first in the GT3 category here Saturday in the International GT Open Series.
Campanico came up with a splendid qualifying lap to put the Novadriver team duo on pole position overall ahead of some of the faster Super GT cars. It gave them a great opportunity to create a gap between themselves and the second GT3 car which was starting fifth on the grid.
The start of the race saw Campanico lose the lead to Daniel Zampieri on the run to the first corner. However, he managed to hold on to second place, but continued to lead the GT3 class for the rest of the stint, holding of the fast and aggressive Andrea Montermini.
Patel then took over at the halfway mark, but unfortunately lost nearly 15 seconds in a pit-lane miscommunication. The Indian then pushed hard in the Audi R8, reeling in the Ferrari of Roman Mavlanov and Zampieri.
The time however, was not enough for the Indian to make a move on the Ferrari driver and had to settle for second place overall. The duo still won the GT3 category by a fair margin.
Patel said: “It feels pretty nice to finally win a GT3 race after all the effort we've been putting in since the season began. Again, Cesar did a fantastic job by fighting up in front during his stint. The pit-stop incident was unfortunate. We were very close to winning overall and that would have really been great for us and the team.
“I'd like to thank Audi India, JK Tyres and Amante for their support over the years. Hopefully, this is the first of many to come. Sunday we start fifth overall and third in class. The 15-second pit-stop handicap because of our win today will make it difficult but we will push hard for a good finish.”