‘Podium was the highlight in Barcelona’ says Leitch

Kiwi driver Brendon Leitch and German teammate Gerhard Watzinger have finished on the podium in the first of two 50-minute races at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain last weekend. Competing in the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe Championship, the pairing narrowly missed a podium in the second outing, finishing fourth in Class and consolidating a top five position with one round remaining. Leitch also competed in a three-hour Fanatec GT World Challenge powered by AWS series endurance race with a mixed result.

“Qualifying was pretty good,” commented Leitch. “It was a bit of a carpark with 44 cars on track with a massively big mix of driver experience. As a result, I didn’t really put a great lap together and we started from fourth in the Pro Am Class.

“Gerhard started the first race and held position until I took over. Unfortunately, I had a safety car period for most of my stint except the last three laps when I was able to pass into third position.

“In the second race, I started from fourth and was able to maintain this until Gerhard took over. He did a fantastic job but a safety car closed up the field and unfortunately he got passed. We finished fifth but got promoted up to fourth through a penalty applied to a car ahead of us.

“It was good weekend in the Super Trofeo series. We were consistent and the car felt great. We have been making small tweaks and improving and not going backwards so super happy with the weekend.”

Competing in the final round of the 2022 Fanatec GT World Challenge powered by AWS series with Leipert Motorsport teammates Isaac Tutumlu Lopez (ESP) and Tyler Cooke (USA) produced a disappointing result.

“We had some really good speed in the GT3,” said Leitch. “It was on rails.

“Qualifying didn’t go the best with both my teammates having contact with other competitors which meant that I got into the car with a bent steering arm. I was able to do one flying lap then parked it!

“This saw us starting second last, so we were always playing catch up.

“Isaac started and was able to climb through from 48th to 34th. We got hit with a drive through and then a couple of pit lane infringements, so this put us back down the order.

“I took the final stint, and we ended up in 28th spot overall and 14th in the Silver category.

“Not the best result as I know that the car was fast. The podium in Super Trofeo was the highlight and with one more round to go it gives us confidence that we can still finish in the top three.”

The final round takes place at Portimao in Portugal, 2-4 November with the world Final taking place 5-6 November, at the same circuit.