Now the 2016 Blancpain GT Series season is over, it’s time to look back at some of the highlights of the past ten races. In this top-10 series, we’ll take a look at the performances that were sometimes not that obvious, but played a crucial part in the outcome of the race. The first instalment of our 2016 top-10 is the opening stint of Andy Soucek in the qualifying race in Misano.
The Misano track was wet on that April Saturday evening, so most of the frontrunners went for rain tyres to do the opening stint. On the fifth row of the grid, the #8 Team M-Sport Bentley stayed on slicks. Opinions differ whether that was voluntarily or not, since the Bentley mechanics were working frantically on the car, but were unable to take the slick tyres off.
Soucek lost lots of ground in the opening stages – he was only in 27th after two laps – but when a dry line formed on the Italian asphalt, Soucek made up ground quickly. 20th after eight laps, back to ninth after thirteen, when the Spaniard was about the make his mandatory pit stop, he was already back at the sharp end. The Bentley then had the added bonus of being able to pit under Full Course Yellow and Soucek’s team-mate Maxime Soulet left the pitlane in the lead. He went on to take the first win of the 2016 season.
Watch the highlights of the Misano Qualifying Race: http://bit.ly/2dZQ34x