It was the Red Bull Ring circuit that hosted the 6th round of the GT Open series, which saw Alex Fontana competing over a weekend in which he starred alongside Hash, his teammate at the wheel of the Porsche entered bby Car Collection Motorsport. The weekend was characterised by almost prohibitive weather conditions, with rain making the challenge all the more intense. The Swiss driver nonetheless managed to bring home a points finish in both races, but saw his Sunday podium vanish after a penalty was imposed following the pit stop.
Despite an unfortunate collision involving the Ticino driver’s car in the early stages of Race 1, his partner’s effective race management nevertheless succeeded in bringing the car back to the pits in 8th place in the Pro-Am standings, with Hash increasingly at ease in the car shared with Fontana and showing promising progress since the start of the season. For the driver from Lugano, on the other hand, the Sunday morning qualifying session was dogged by several red flags due to accidents caused by the rain, with his potential negated by neutralisations, one of which came on Fontana’s hot lap when he was aiming at the category pole.
In the Sunday afternoon race, however, Alex managed to recover from the get go, racing in the podium places throughout his stint, until a penalty imposed by race management during the pit stop, in which they had been just only five thousandths quicker than the time handicap to be served, relegated the Car Collection Motorsport Porsche back to 8th place. Five seconds added to the final time meant that the Race 2 podium was out of the German team’s reach, but the outfit could take some consolation for having competed in the upper reaches of the Pro-Am standings even under the most prohibitive conditions.
Alex Fontana
“It was a good weekend at the Red Bull Ring, where together with my teammate Hash we managed to put in a good performance despite the difficulties. The penalty we were given takes nothing away from the quality the work we put in, which showed great progress for Hash, who is in his debut season at the wheel of these cars after the skiing accident that forced him to revise his plans last year. I also think our overall performance was very encouraging and crossing the line on the class podium is a factor that shows our potential, even though those five thousandths at the pit stop cost us the chance to celebrate Hash’s birthday with a trophy. Seeing the podium slip away leaves a bitter aftertaste, but it was still a positive weekend.”