César Machado and Jan Durán won the second race of the Circuito de Jerez season-opener round, which had a heartbreaking finish.
The Speedy Motorsport Toyota GR Supra GT4 EVO Iberian duo started from pole-position, but Francisco Mora managed to surprise Jan Durán in the first corner, taking the lead. However, the Spaniard youngster didn't let up, keeping up the pressure until he regained the lead just before a Safety-Car situation created by one of the FPAK Junior Team supported Ginetta G40s that stopped on track with technical problems.
However, the drivers of the Japanese car had a ten-second handicap in their pit stop, due to race one division win, dropping them to fourth place overall after the pit stop.
César Machado didn't let up and made a blistering recovery, first overtaking Guillermo Aso, in the NM Racing Team Mercedes AMG GT4, to set his sights on Nerea Martí, in the BMW M4 GT4 of BMW España Motorsport, and Miguel Lobo, who was leading with a damaged Veloso Motorsport Porsche, although under a lot of pressure from the Spaniard.
César Machado was gaining time on the two frontrunners, who were battling fiercely for first place. On the penultimate lap, the Speedy Motorsport driver launched an attack on Nerea Martí who, when braking, had to widen her trajectory to avoid hitting Miguel Lobo's Porsche, opening the door to his opponent who didn't let the opportunity slip away.
But the race wasn't over yet. With the two cars running side by side through several corners, César Machado relegated Miguel Lobo to second, taking the victory, which he celebrated with Jan Durán.
The Porsche driver also had to contend with Nerea Martí, who came out of the last corner very well and in a 'dragster race' to the finish line saw the chequered flag with a lead of just 0.003s over the Promotion Motorsport-run BMW, securing second place for himself and Francisco Mora, while Nerea Martí and Jose de los Milagros were on the bottom step of the podium for the second time.
Reviving their duel from last season, Jorge Rodrigues and Patrick Cunha, in Veloso Motorsport's Audi R8 LMS GT4, put in a top-class performance, with eighth place overall securing them the GT4 Bronze win, beating Nil Montserrat and Alberto de Martín, in NM Racing Team's Mercedes AMG GT4, who finished second in the division.
After their misfortune in the morning race, the Nabais brothers, Miguel and André, won the GT4 Am division, seeing the chequered flag in the Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS CS in seventeenth place, thus giving Speedy Motorsport another victory to celebrate this weekend.
Iberian TCR Champion Daniel Teixeira had a difficult start to the race, dropping from twenty-second to thirty-eighth on the first lap, but with a lively pace and increasingly adapted to the JT59 Racing Team's Hyundai Elantra N TCR, he made an excellent recovery that took him to eighteenth place overall and victory in the Touring Car class.
Rui Miritta once again made a name for himself in Cup driving the Monteiros Competição Porsche 911 Cup, achieving a creditable fourteenth place overall, outperforming his great rivals, Marcus Fothergill and Dave Benett, who had some problems with their Tockwith Motorsports-run car.
Iberian Supercars and the Campeonato de Portugal de Velocidade return to the Autódromo do Estoril on 13 and 14 July.
Meanwhile, the second event of the recently created Jarama RACE Supercars trophy will be held at the Circuito del Jarama on 15 and 16 June.
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