Ireland’s Ryan Cullen has secured back to back race wins in the penultimate round of Season 8 of the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Middle East at the Bahrain International Circuit (BIC) to extend his lead in the drivers’ championship.
Cullen crossed the line 0.555 seconds ahead of Britain’s Tom Oliphant in second and third placed Dylan Pereira of Luxemburg. Doha-resident Charlie Frijns narrowly missed out the vital podium he needed to finish fourth and as a result has fallen further behind in the race for the driver’s title.
With only two races of Round 6 remaining Cullen (238 pts) is now 33 points clear of closest rival Frijns (205 pts) in second and Oliphant (198 pts) in third, 40 points behind the leader. This weekend’s results have damaged Frijns’ ambitions to secure his first drivers’ championship but his hopes have not been extinguished completely.
After securing a third and fourth place finishes in Round 5 Frijns said: “This was not the weekend I had hoped for. We struggled to find the speed in both races and things just didn’t seem to go my way. The lap times separating all the drivers from first right down to eighth on the grid were so tight and I was down to opportunities and mistakes made in the race which made the final difference.
“Of course the championship is not over yet and although it wasn’t the result I wanted I’m still only 33 points behind Ryan Cullen with an available 50 points across the last two races. Anything can happen in motorsport and we’ve seen this all season, I will look forward to returning to Bahrain in April and giving one last push to clinch the championship title.”
Back to back wins are monumental for the Irishman. It sees Cullen take a sizable step forward and potentially unstoppable momentum towards claiming his first driver title in the region’s most professional and competitive series.
For Cullen the textbook double victory has set up the mouth-watering prospect of clinching a maiden title on the ultimate stage as the final round of the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Middle East will support the showpiece Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix, April 15-16th 2017.
Speaking after the race win Cullen said: “That was one of the closest races this season. It was a good clean race and I definitely enjoyed the win. I managed to open up a small gap early on but started to make a few mistakes. Fortunately they weren’t big ones and each time Tom Oliphant put the pressure on behind me, I pushed even more and managed to keep the gap in front. I don’t know where this leaves me on points after this weekend but that doesn’t mean anything to me, I want to keep pushing and aim to finish my season with two race wins next round!”
On a second successive day of racing the drivers were met with untypical overcast and blustery conditions but it did little to dampen the excitement or speed as drivers took to the shortened Oasis configuration circuit measuring 2.55KM.
Again qualifying proved critical and a massive factor in the overall race result as Cullen took full advantage of his pole position. The opening race of Round 5 had highlighted that the short technical circuit offered few genuine opportunities for overtaking so drivers were fully committed in the qualifying session.
Two days in a row Cullen had to immediately turn his attacking exploits in qualifying into defence from literally the first corner of the race. Second placed Oliphant who was desperately seeking his first win relentlessly pursued the Irishman and exerted as much pressure as possible from the first lap to the last. But to no avail.
Over 20 laps of racing on the limit the front two could not be separated with Cullen edging it. The gap remained under a second throughout in a perfect advertisement for the Porsche series. It was a similar theme across the field as no driver could pull away from those in front or behind.
The tussle between Pereira who finished in third and Charlie Frijns in fourth was equally enthralling, with Pereira just holding onto his slim lead having benefitted from a better start than the Qatar-based driver. The top six places were completed by rookie driver from Oman Al Faisal Al Zubair in fifth and Saudi Arabia’s Bandar Alesayi sixth. The duo will now continue their battle for the silver category into the final round with only a point between them.
The final round of the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Middle East takes place on Saturday 15th April and Sunday 16th April in Bahrain as part of the official weekend line-up for the
