A bitter 24h race for Davide Rigon at Spa-Francorchamps circuit

The result of the 24h race in Spa wasn’t as good as planned for Davide Rigon. Just two years after scoring an epic win in the FIA GT World Championship driving a car of the “Scuderia”, the talented driver from Veneto had prepared to the smallest detail this challenging event, which was the fourth round of the Blancpain GT Endurance Series.
After the flood of people present at the traditional drivers and cars parade which took place at Spa city centre on Wednesday, the competitive week-end officially started on Thursday with free practices, during which his teammate Zampieri had a terrible accident because of which the Ferrari 458 GT3 71 was irreparably damaged.
Mechanics were able to accomplish a miracle by fixing the car in time for the qualifying round after which the Kessel Racing Team got the middle rows, missing the top 20 to be valid for a superpole. After a night and morning shower, race started in dry. The first driver out on track was Gattuso, who gave way to Davide Rigon one hour after the start.
The driver from Vicenza began to gain positions till he got up to 16th ( the third in category), before giving way to Daniel Zampieri, who had to pit for a couple of laps because of a wiper electrical problem. Despite a frenzied race pace, bad luck prevailed , so only 6 hours before the end of the race, the car was stopped by a serious technical problem which forced it to drop out. When that happened, it was Daniel Zampieri’s turn behind the wheel of the car which is a member of PRO class.
“It was a hard week-end, especially because of the terrible accident during qualifying. Daniel thankfully didn’t hurt himself. Despite the miracle accomplished by mechanics, to whom I offer my congratulations, the car had not been the same any more and we had several problems which drove us to drop out. Anyway I’m pleased with my race pace ‘cause I was one of the fastest on track. In the last turn I re-gained several laps. The atmosphere you live during a 24h race is something amazing, just like seeing a flood of fans……Really beautiful!”