A full nine months after his last Carrera Cup Italia race at Monza, the 2024 Rookie of the Year Lirim Zendeli returned to the Italian version of Porsche’s spectacular one-make championship with a hard-fought ninth place in the third round of the season at Vallelunga.
Brought in as a ‘super-sub’ for one of the BeDriver team’s regular PCCI drivers, MIM-contracted Zendeli has been having an action-packed week from start to finish. Thursday’s four-hour collective testing session first saw him top the timesheets, a particularly impressive result for the German-Albanian driver on his return behind the wheel of the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup machine.
Free practice and qualifying on Friday and Saturday then saw him further shake the rust of inactivity off and he was back challenging for pole position with the Cup regulars before being obstructed by another driver on his quick lap, which left him down in a P10 starting position for Race 1 and P8 in tomorrow’s second encounter.
In the 30-minute plus one lap race, Lirim made a great start and was up into P7 already at the end of the opening lap, sandwiched between Francesco Braschi (Ombra Racing) and Simone Iaquinta (Ghinzani Motorsport). After 10 minutes however Lirim made contact with Braschi at the hairpin and immediately picked up a ten-second penalty, to be added after the chequered flag.
In the second half of the race however Lirim was clearly the fastest driver of the three battling for P4 and he passed Alberto Cerqui (Ebimotors) for P5 on the final lap. Despite finishing ninth overall in the final standings, Lirim said he was happy with both his pace and his race and is convinced he can get a better result tomorrow.
“The race pace was amazing. We had a great start and a great first lap. I made some minor mistakes that threw me back a bit, but I think that even with the penalty, I could have driven away if I didn’t have all the fight with Festante and Cerqui,” he declared. “The car was amazing; I could do some good moves and I did a nice move on Cerqui as well. It was just a very good race, but then it happened with Braschi in front of me, basically we were both braking into the corner. I think he just overdid it a bit into the hairpin, he locked his front left and obviously you have to slow down, but I was braking already into the corner and doing the normal line, and he didn’t leave any room. So, I couldn’t do anything more than just stop but it wasn’t enough. I touched him and he spun, I got a 10 second penalty immediately. It was unfortunate because we are racing and we’re driving on the limit all the time. Every small mistake can cause a lot, so he’s doing a small mistake and tries to close the door, but I cannot simply disappear. Everyone was all over the place at the beginning of the race, and I was just saving my tyres with very clean driving. And from minute 15, I knew everyone was struggling a lot, and I could just send it past them. Tomorrow, from P8 on the grid I feel sure it’s going to be a good race!”
The fourth round of the PCCI gets the green light on Sunday at 12.20.
