26.05.2024
Gerrard Xie took his maiden win in the Euroformula Open in Race 3 at Spa-Francorchamps after mastering perfectly the very tricky conditions. A violent shower soaked the track for the last race of the event, giving the contenders a real ‘Spa experience’.
The race lost one of its protagonists even before the start as Francesco Simonazzi’s car suffered an oil leak and remained in the box of BVM Racing. Chinese driver of Motopark was sitting in pole in the reversed grid and perfectly used the advantage to lead from the beginning ahead of Michael Shin with whom he kept an interesting fight in the initial laps.
Behind them, the challenge was to stay on track in the water spray. Bergmeister and Révész both had off-tracks in the initial laps and later also Fernando Barrichello suffered the same misfortune. That opened the way to Brad Benavides to take third, a position he would keep until the finishing line.
After winning Race 1 and Race 2 the American missed the hat-trick but took heavy points, extending his lead in the standings over Simonazzi to 60 points (193 vs 133).
On the podium, Gerrard Xie commented: “This time I had a perfect start and in these conditions it was crucial to stay ahead and build some gap. Conditions were really tricky and in the second part of the race I focused on managing the gap and the tyres. I’m very happy of winning my first race with this car.”