A Masterpiece of driving in Portugal

Amazing, Impressive, Outstanding and truly spectacular are some of the adjectives that come in my mind when thinking of last week end race of Luca and his teammate Diego Alessi.
The Italian duo, went to the challenging new track in the south of Portugal with a desire of revenge for all the unfair penalties they have received this year from the FIA Commission, making it impossible for them to obtain significant results.
Portimao was a different story, despite the gap between the Zo6R Corvette and the others is still there, the technical track and the amazing speed of the duo made this week end worth all the struggles.
In Qual 1 everything seemed to go wrong when some radiator problems forced Luca to abort the session and relegated him last in the grid for race one and also did not give him precious time to train with new tires and to get a better feel of the track.
Luckily the problem was solved by the mechanics in time for Diego to take part in Qual 2 where he qualified a very good 9th position only 6thenst form pole, this to say how close the competition is and still that we could not do better ( later Buchut tested the car and could not do better than Diego's time).
Race 1)
Luca was the man going for a mission and started like a missile from the back of the grid, passing 6 cars at the start, and than fought his way up the group passing an average of 2-3 cars per lap, showing some impressive driving skills and very good control on the dog fighting that is usually very tough in the Gt3 and also very risky as accidents and contacts are happening everywhere. Luca managed to drive past the opponents despite not having the fastest car and despite not having practiced in qualifying, giving the car at the driver change to Diego in 11th position.
Diego went out of the pits in 6th and managed to catch the Ford Gt40 of Mutch and the Audi of Campanico and passed them in one lap with great speed and courage. The 3rd place was now achieved as on car also had to succumb to Diego's speed.
From Last to 3rd is more than a result again giving the conditions and the competition.
Race 2)
This time things looked better as Diego started 9th and due to damage from race 1 accident 2 cars did not go in grid putting him virtually 6th,still he managed a real good start passing 3rd at the end of the main straight behind the Viper and the Aston Martin, the first laps where hard as our car with harder compound tires struggles to keep the pace of the first ones, but by the time it was time for the driver change the performance gap between the best cars and ours was reduced, and Diego managed to create a good gap to the 4th and to the rest of the pack, but could do nothing to the most performing Aston.
Driver change was superb and Luca went out 3rd right behind the Audi, in order not to loose contact luca knew he had to push immediately 100% and in the first lap he almost lost control trying to follow the Audi, tires went smoking at the left 5th gear turn as Luca jumped over the curbs and flew over the gravel to lose a couple of seconds and many years of life do to the intensity of the moment.
For the next few laps the car has some strong vibrations that may have lead to a puncture and Luca decided not to push to the limit and as soon as the vibrations where reduced he started to go back to pace but the race was almost to the end and there was no way the Audi could have been caught, the followers could not match Luca's speed and a great 2nd place was achieved.
Luca and Diego are leading the Corvette cup with 6 wins and are now 6th in the Championship ladder with 18 points.
Next race will be in Paul Ricard and we really hope to see some more of this kind of driving and results there.
Untill than….
Full Throttle!!!