MIM-contracted driver David Vidales is gearing up for another important race this weekend, the penultimate round of the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup at the iconic Autodromo Nazionale Monza in northern Italy.
This will be the young Spanish driver’s fourth outing for AF Corse – Francorchamps Motors in his rookie GT racing season, and he will be aiming for a strong result on the high-speed Monza track which always produces numerous slipstreaming battles and overtaking opportunities around its 5.793 km iconic parkland layout.
David, who took part in a three-hour test session on Thursday afternoon, in which he shook the rust off after several weeks of racing inactivity, is feeling confident of scoring a good result in the three-hour race on Sunday, and the #71 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT’s chances of challenging for the top positions are boosted by the arrival of a new team-mate, Ferrari factory Hypercar driver and recent CoTA World Endurance Championship race winner Yifei Ye, who lines up with David and his regular partner Thomas Neubauer.
“It’s a special weekend, a home race for the team and a little bit for me as well because I grew up here. It’s nice to be back after the summer break and as always, we are all looking forward to it,” Vidales declared. “I feel a bit rusty because I’ve been stopped for a while, around two months, but after some laps this afternoon I was already feeling good with the car, the tyres, the grip and everything. It’s super nice to have an official driver from Ferrari with the team, he’s from Hypercar and is very fast so you can learn new things. I think we have a strong team to have a good weekend.”
“I don’t really know Monza, this is only my third time here, and my first with a GT, my last race was in F3. Monza is super nice, especially for racing it’s a good track, with plenty of overtaking opportunities. We know that top speed is not our strength, but it’s the same for others, hopefully we don’t suffer from that, and we can fight well in terms of racing in the race. It’s a very good track and it’s going to be a cool race to watch.”
“It’s been a year of qualifying sessions where I perform very well, I’ve always done the qualifying 1, which is the most difficult one because you have a full tank, and you go on the track without knowing how it is and without references. But I think at the last weekends, both at Spa and Nurbürgring, we had a good pace, not only in qualifying but also in the race. As always it depends on the BoP, but I hope it allows us to go for the win, which is the goal.”
The 52-car field will be out on track next on Saturday morning for two hours of Free Practice at 9.00, with Pre-Qualifying scheduled for 14.10 in the afternoon. Qualifying is on Sunday morning at 9.00, with the three-hour race starting at 15.30 (all times CEST).
