K-PAX Racing’s Andrea Caldarelli and Michele Beretta led nearly flag-to-flag to win Fanatec GT World Challenge America Powered by AWS Race No. 1 Saturday (Sept. 24). It is the duo’s fifth win of the year together and Caldarelli’s seventh overall win of the year.
“The guys at K-PAX Racing and Lamborghini Squadra Corse [worked] really hard in the three weeks since Road America,” Caldarelli said after the race. “This result goes to them.”
Beretta started from the pole and led early in his Lamborghini. For BimmerWorld Racing, trouble struck immediately. The team had struggled Saturday morning in qualifying, where an ECU issue meant that they were unable to set a competitive lap time in either session meant that Chandler Hull had to start at the rear of the field.
On the start, there was a scramble near the back of the field that resulted in Hull hitting the left rear corner of RealTime Racing’s Erin Vogel. That contact spun out Vogel and launched Hull into the concrete wall before he even reached the start-finish line. The crash ended the race for Hull and Bill Auberlen before they even reached the start-finish line. Vogel was able to drive her Acura back to the pit lane for repairs.
Following a safety car period, Beretta was able to open a small lead on Turner Motorsport’s Michael Dinan. Dinan, who will only compete in this race this weekend due to a prior engagement, was able to keep up with Beretta for the first 10 minutes or so after the restart. Eventually, Beretta was able to slowly pull away from everyone else. By the time the pit window opened up, Beretta had opened a 10-second lead on the BMW.
Meanwhile, by that point, Dinan had fallen into the clutches of Beretta’s teammate Misha Goikhberg. Manny Franco, making his series debut, was not far behind.
Once the mid-race pit stops were made, not a whole lot was different. Caldarelli was able to maintain the entire lead that Beretta had built for him. Robby Foley had to deal not only with Jordan Pepper in K-PAX Racing’s No. 3 Lamborghini, but former IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GT Daytona champion Alessandro Balzan in the Conquest Racing Ferrari.
The lead was 12 seconds leaving the pits, but Caldarelli was able to consistently increase the advantage over the final 47 minutes of the race. Meanwhile, Pepper continued to work Foley over, trying multiple times to make a move for second. None of them worked.
In the closing laps, Balzan was…
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