Saturday bitter for Andrea Piccini in the second round of Michelin Le Mans Cup in Monza circuit. The driver of Sansepolcro and his team-mate Claudio Schiavoni come out with a fifth place at the end of an eventful race on Kessel Racing’s Ferrari 488 GT3. Starting with the fifth qualifying time, Schiavoni managed to keep close to the third and fourth place, with an excellent race pace. At the time of the driver change, the problems that occurred at the Ferrari of Ulrich and Mediani allowed Andrea Piccini to start his stint immediately gaining a position and with a gap of a few seconds from Alessandro Baccani’s Porsche in third position; Piccini started pushing from the first corners to fill this delay, but first the contact between two prototypes of the LMP3 category and then the neutralization of the “full course yellow” allowed Porsche to take the advantage over 20 seconds. At that point, Piccini began to push further on the accelerator, arriving just 3″ behind the Porsche when they were missing 4 laps at the end. In an attempt to complete the pursuit, however, Andrea Piccini ended up with the obstacle of a prototype of the Lmp3, remedying a “drive through”. Released from the pits, three laps from the epilogue, he noticed the Ferrari of Maurizio Mediani immediately in front of him and started to pursue him, succeeding in supporting him repeatedly during the last lap. Mediani continued to close the line until he hit Piccini at the exit from the Roggia and pushed him onto the grass. The maneuver was considered incorrect by the commissioners, but they imposed a penalty with a warning for the next two races. The outcome of that of Monza does not change, therefore, but Mediani remains under observation for the upcoming events. It went much better to Giacomo Piccini, Andrea’s brother, who won the victory paired with Sergio Pianezzola, always with the Ferrari 488 GT3 and always for the Kessel Racing team. Their car started in the lead and kept the leadership to the end; how to say, in short, that in this profile there was no history and so Giacomo Piccini and Sergio Pianezzola lead the ranking with full marks. “It’s a real shame not to be able to achieve a deserved third place – said Andrea Piccini – A race conditioned by the decisions made in the final because we were among the fastest throughout the weekend and a podium position would have been the just reward for the good work done by the whole team. Before the Porsche took advantage of the situation of “full course yellow” to gain almost 8 seconds, then the penalty and finally the inaccuracy not punished by Mediani. Closed Chapter: let’s look ahead and we are already focused on the next event, which will be staged on the wonderful Le Mans track“. To remember in this regard the dates: Friday 15 and Saturday 16 June.
