Historic result at Monza as Alex Fontana conquers the podium

Alex Fontana’s GT World Challenge 2021 season got off to a sensational start: in the Monza 3 Hours, the opening round of the Endurance Cup, the Swiss driver conquered an incredible third place overall along with victory in the Silver Cup, this after a great qualifying session and an epic fightback in a race in which truly everything happened.

Sunday started brilliantly for the  Emil Frey Racing standard bearer who recorded the fifth fastest time in Q1 ( 1'47"469) at the wheel of the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo number 14. The Swiss driver’s performance, along with those of his fellow countrymen Rolf Ineichen and Ricardo Feller, allowed the team to secure 7^th place on the grid, the only Silver Cup entrants in the top 10.

The race, characterised by variable weather conditions, saw Fontana take over from Ineichen for the second stint. Around a quarter of an hour in, Alex suffered a deteriorating left rear wet tyre, as happened to numerous rivals when the asphalt began to dry out after the rain. Having managed to reach the pits for an emergency stop, the Swiss rejoined the race in 24^th place and set about achieving the seemingly impossible. Displaying great pace and benefiting from the impeccable work of the Emil Frey pit wall team, Fontana made a number of passes and completed his stint as the provisional leader. Feller took over for the final session and crossed the finishing line in a historic third place overall, hard on the heels of the second-placed car: never before had a Silver Cup team reached the overall podium in the Endurance Cup.

It could hardly have been a better start to the championship for Fontana, confirming the promise of the qualifying performances and the intensive work conducted in-house and on-track over the winter The objective now is to be similarly competitive over the weekend of 7-9 May at Magny Cours, where the GT World Challenge will see the first round in the Sprint Cup. The next round in the Endurance series will instead be at Le Castellet on 28-30 May.

Alex Fontana
"I’m almost speechless at the end of such an extraordinary Sunday in which I disputed one of the most incredible races of my career. When my tyre went off I thought it was all over and that would have been so disappointing after what we had shown in qualifying. However, we were able to continue and heads down we threw ourselves into a thrilling chase, gaining position after position. I had actually taken a provisional lead when I handed over the car to Ricardo for the conclusive stint. We’ll long remember this race and I have to congratulate my teammates, Ricardo and Rolf, for the quality of their performance.  We make up a truly competitive and well-balanced trio and today showed that. Our thanks also go to Emil Frey and Lamborghini Squadra Corse for having given us such an effective car and to all the lads in the pits, the mechanics and engineers who displayed such concentration and whose cool heads guided us towards this incredible result,”