12 Dec Kuba Giermaziak narrowly misses podium in Barcelona
This weekend the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup’s season opener was held in Barcelona (Spain). Kuba Giermaziak covered the second place in the VERVA-Porsche for a long time and only narrowly missed the podium at the end. His team-mate Patryk Szczerbinski finished the championship’s first race of the year on position 15.
New season – new car: In this year the most popular international one-make-cup uses the brand-new version of the Porsche for the first time: The 460 HP Porsche 911 GT3 Cup. Already in qualifying the squad around Franz Konrad showed that it had prepared well for the new car. On the 4,7 kilometres long circuit Kuba Giermaziak secured the second starting place. “A very good initial position,” the Pole said happily. “Especially because we have saved one set of tires for the race.”
The lights went green for the first run of the season at noontime on Sunday. Giermaziak had a good start into the race and defended his second position without any problems. In the following laps he experienced a rather lonesome race – an attack against the leader was not possible, but also the gap to the cars behind increased continuously.
But towards the end the race should turn into a real thriller: The 22-year-old’s rear tyres faded away heavily so that he got under immense pressure from Michael Ammermüller and Nicki Thiim. The man from Piaski showed his fighting spirit and successfully defended the attacks of his competitors – but four corners before the end Ammermüller started an extremely aggressive attempt: “I got clearly hit at the rear by him, therefore I came off the track,” the Pole, who crossed the finish line on the fourth position after this incident, showed his anger.
Behind the wheel of the second Porsche serviced by Konrad-Lechner-Motorsport was Giermaziak’s fellow countryman Patryk Szczerbinski. The just 19-year-old driver is among the youngest pilots in the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup. After position 14 in qualifying the youngster had trouble with oversteering in the race and finished on the 15th place: “I hope that we can make a huge step forward until Monaco,” was his conclusion.
Team principal Franz Konrad was a little bit angry about the treatment of his driver: “The attack against Kuba Giermaziak was extremely hard – other incidents like this have been penalized in the past. Nevertheless we have scored a good result.” In the championship standings his team covers the sixth position after the first of in total nine races.
There will be no break for Konrad Motorsport: Already at the next weekend the third championship run of the Porsche Carrera Cup Germany will take place on the Nürburgring-Nordschleife. Just one week later the international Supercup’s season highlight is on the schedule: In the Principality of Monaco Kuba Giermaziak and Patryk Szczerbinski want to show their talent again.