Mixed results for Black Falcon at the third Carrera Cup weekend

Hits: 3279

The third round of the Porsche Carrera Cup Germany at the Red Bull Ring in Austria saw two out of three Black Falcon Porsche 911 GT3 Cup cars deliver superior results. Carlos Rivas managed to catch up with the leader of the amateur cup championship thanks to two podium finishes at the 4.326-kilometer-long track. Gabriele Piana scored eight championship points during each race and delivered his best Carrera Cup result yet. Meanwhile, Christian Engelhart’s weekend was not as satisfying – he was forced to retire in both races due to collisions with competitors.

Start number 4 – Gabriele Piana – RN Vision Team Black Falcon
Gabriele Piana’s results do certainly not represent the best Carrera-Cup-result in the career of the RN-Vision-driver. However, rank twelve on Saturday and 15 on Sunday were sufficient to bring him into the top ten of the designated Porsche Carrera Cup drivers in both races, since several Porsche-Supercup-drivers utilised the third round of the championship to prepare for their own races at the Red Bull Ring. The latter are guest starters and do not qualify for the overall championship despite finishing in top positions, which means that the regulars such as Piana are moving up in the championship ranking.  The 30-year-old thus collected a total of 16 points and is still in eight position in the championship after six races.

Start number 5 – Christian Engelhart – Black Falcon
After a nearly perfect weekend at the Lausitzring, Christian Engelhart did not collect a single point in Austria. On Saturday, he set the fastest lap time after starting from positon nine before he had to retire after a collision in lap eleven, which was the result of an evasive manoeuvre. As a consequence, the 30-year-old was dropped by five positions on the starting grid on Sunday for causing a collision. Consequently, Engelhart started the race from position 19, but had to retire again after just four laps into the race. Another incident causing nearly the same damage on the air cooler of the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup stopped him from continuing.

Start number 6 – Carlos Rivas – Black Falcon
Carlos Rivas had another smooth race weekend. The fast Luxembourgian celebrated on the podium of the amateur cup thanks to his fantastic second place in both races. Additionally, Rivas received full points for a race victory in the Sunday race because the class winner joined the Carrera Cup as a guest for the weekend. Rivas further set the fastest lap time out of all amateur drivers on Sunday. With the newly gained points in the championship classification, Rivas now is at par with the first placed Wolfgang Triller, who is only leading because of more race victories.

Team Black Falcon after the race:

 Wolfgang Drabiniok –  Speaker RN Vision Team Black Falcon:
 “It’s been a very hot and competitive weekend at the Red Bull Ring. Altough the overall results are slightly distorted because of the amount of Supercup-guest-starters, Gabriele managed to achieve his best Carrera Cup result yet and showed an excellent performance. Therefore, he remains eighth in the championship.”

Gabriele Piana – driver start number 4:
“We struggled with the heat and the setup of the car while some competitors looked like their car was faster. However, in reality we were not really far from the top teams – a grid as competitive as this one means you end up on position 17 in qualifying with a gap of half a second to pole-position. Nevertheless, I had a good weekend with decent results and I was nearly as fast as Christian, which is a great achievement. We’re highly motivated and will come back stronger in three weeks time.”

Christian Engelhart – driver start number 5:
“It was a very hard weekend for us. The fastest lap on Saturday promised potential. Unfortunately, the chaotic qualifying that saw a lot of interruptions didn't help. We’ll look into the reasons after the weekend in all detail. In both races, I had to retire after collisions and I’m really sorry for the whole team. We’ll be back stronger!”

Carlos Rivas – Fahrer Startnummer 6:
"It's been a very interesting and hard weekend. The qualifying was not as good as we have hoped for, because we had some troubles to find the right setup in the practice sessions, but we sorted it out for the race. Altough I had to start from far back, I've finished second twice after working myself up the grid during the races. For the second race I got full points for a victory, which led to a very tight standing in the championship. The team did a great job."