Joakim Olander (Scuderia Autoropa) took a lights-to-flag win in the Coppa Shell AM World Final at Imola to take home the title of 2022 champion.
The Swede powered away from pole and despite coming under pressure from this weekend’s double race winner Peter Christensen (Formula Racing), who briefly got the nose of his 488 Evo past on one occasion, he administered the lead and easily took the chequered flag for the win with a comfortable seven-tenths margin. Not even the entry of the safety car for eight minutes after Ashish Patel (Kessel Racing) went into the barriers at the Gresini curve could halt his march towards victory.
Third place went to Alexander Nussbaumer (Gohm Motorsport), who was a bit behind in the early part of the race but the Austrian then circulated with the two leaders until the flag after the safety car period had bunched the field back together.
The top 5 positions more or less remained the same throughout the race, in particular after the first lap when NA challenger Tony Davies (Continental AutoSports), who was third on the grid, got it all wrong at the Tamburello when he made contact with Nussbaumer and ended up in the gravel.
Fourth place went to Christian Herdt-Wipper (Saggio Muenchen) who also caught up with the leaders in the final stages, ahead of fellow German Martinus Richter (Mertel Motorsport). Italian Maurizio Pitorri (CDP Best Lap) finished in P6 after a great three-way battle with Britain’s Paul Rogers (JCT600 Leeds), who had a great race to finish seventh, and Matthias Moser (Baron Motorsport). Stuart Marston (Maranello Sales) and Paolo Scudieri (Sa.Mo.Car) made up the top 10 positions.
Amongst the North American competitors, Lisa Clark (Ferrari Beverly Hills) was putting in a fantastic performance in sixth place until lap 13, but she then slowed with a technical problem when going through the Tamburello and was swamped by the following group of four, eventually finishing in nineteenth. The win eventually went to Dan Cornish (Ferrari Austin) in P13 ahead of Rey Acosta (The Collection), who received a full sequence of warnings from race direction after exceeding the track limits on a number of occasions.
Davies’s adrenaline-filled race continued in the final stages, when he made contact with the car ahead of him braking downhill into the Rivazza, and cut across the track like a missile, luckily avoiding all the other 488s that were going through the curve at the time, before ending up in the gravel.
There were only two competitors in the Challenge Asia Pacific grouping, which saw victory go to Shigeru Kamiue (European Version) in P16, two places ahead of Baby Kei (Cornes Osaka).
