Podium for Bartholomew at final event in Monza

The final round of the Italian GT Sprint Championship took place at Monza over the weekend with Jack Bartholomew and teammate Philippe Denes securing a podium driving the #85 Imperiale Racing Lamborghini.

Qualifying didn’t go quite to plan with a red flag interrupting the first qualifying session and in the second qualifying Jack struggled to get the tyres into the optimum window meaning the #85 would start from P3 for race 1 and P8 for race 2.

For race 1 Philippe started from P3 but was nudged back to P4 at the tricky first corner then several safety car periods followed on lap 1, 4 & 9 for accidents until the pit window opened on lap 10. Almost the entire field pitted under full course yellow to switch drivers. With Bartholomew now in the #85 Lamborghini he exited the pits in P3. The green flag to resume racing was shown on lap 14 and Jack was busy defending his position from the #8 BMW for several laps until he managed to create a comfortable gap and began closing in on P2, unfortunately time ran out and he crossed the line in P3.

Overnight as a safety precaution the brakes were changed on the team cars as one of the cars had had a  serious brake issue,

Starting in P8 Jack jumped into P7 at turn one but the race was neutralised  with the safety car to recover a stranded car. The race restarted at the end of lap 2 and Jack held position and was in a train of cars all fighting for position until he was nudged back to P8 on lap 10 into turn 1. Jack was now struggling with a brake issue that was impeding his progress, but he managed to hold position until the pit window opened, and he pitted at the end of lap 11 to hand over to his teammate. Once all the cars had made their stops the #85 was now in P11 and still struggling with the brakes but by lap 24 had managed to move up into P8, on the final lap the #5 Aston Martin started to slow and the #85 Imperiale Lamborghini past him and they crossed the line to take P7.