Alex Fontana misses out on the podium at Spa

The Swiss driver takes the Emil Frey Racing Jaguar to its first finish in the 24 Hours

For Alex Fontana the Spa-Francorchamps 24 Hours concluded with a historic result. At the wheel of the Emil Frey Racing Jaguar G3, the Swiss driver secured a fourth-place finish in the penultimate round of this season’s Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup. In a weekend that was always highly competitive and emotively intense, Fontana and his teammates Mikael Grenier and Adrian Zaugg brought the Swiss constructor its first positive result in the historic Belgian marathon.  Until today, in fact, Emil Frey Jaguar Racing had yet to see the chequered flag at the 7004-metre circuit in the Ardennes. Despite an adverse Balance of Performance, the car had shown its potential from the first practice sessions, just missing out on qualification for the Superpole session reserved for the first 20 cars overall by less than a tenth. Car #54 nonetheless secured its fourth consecutive pole position in the Silver Cup reserved for young and talented drivers categorized as “Silver” by the FIA. Just a few hours after the start in front of a wonderful crowd, Fontana and his teammates had to cope with an engine problem that caused a chronic loss of power. Nevertheless, the Jaguar was the class leader through to a few minutes from the end of the sixth hour of the race, which together with the 12^th assigned points for the overall standings, along with the conventional chequered flag position of course. The Swiss driver nonetheless finished in 4^th place in the Silver Cup and 28^th overall, finishing the Spa 24 Hours for the first time on his third attempt.

Alex Fontana
This is a historic result at Spa for me and for everyone at Emil Frey Jaguar Racing.This is a project in which we all believed strongly over the winter and the performances on the track have proved us right.The BoP was decidedly unfavourable for us, but despite a problem with the engine we were able to compete with our adversaries.The mechanics and engineers did all they could to solve the problem but it did have an effect on the overall performance.No one was giving up though and Adrian, Mikael and I managed to take out Jaguar to the finishing line for the first time.As always, a huge number of friends and supporters came to the race and transmitted their enthusiasm to us. They too played their part in helping us find the necessary charge and motivation to complete this gruelling race.We shall now be taking a few week’s well deserved rest.”