Verstappen Racing claimed its first-ever victory in the top class of the GT World Challenge Europe last weekend, ending a season blighted by misfortune.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
And for driver Jules Gounon, the triumph belongs to one man above all others: owner and four-time F1 drivers’ champion Max Verstappen.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
It was at Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours last Saturday that the team bearing the Dutchman’s name secured its maiden Pro-class win in the GT World Challenge Europe, one of the most prestigious GT series on the continent.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Gounon and Daniel Juncadella converted pole position into victory in the weekend’s opening race, which counted towards the Sprint Cup standings.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The result carried particular weight given the team’s troubled season. The #3 Mercedes-AMG GT3 had suffered a run of miserable luck throughout the campaign, from mechanical failures to being caught up in incidents entirely of others’ making.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Just before Juncadella brought the car across the finish line, Gounon had already made it clear to GT World Challenge Europe who deserved the most credit.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“Well, we have one guy to thank, and that’s Max, because he gave us so many opportunities during the winter to test. Many days with good tyres,” he said.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Gounon was keen to emphasise that Verstappen’s contribution extends well beyond simply writing cheques.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
According to the driver, the Dutchman has been deliberately constructing the kind of professional infrastructure that serious GT outfits are built upon.<\/p>\n
“And we have a great set of engineers, with the four of them, behind the scenes, working day and night towards this project.”<\/p>\n
“The goal for Max was to try to be one of the best GT teams in the world, and today, I think, we are doing well.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Verstappen Racing claimed its first-ever victory in the top class of the GT World Challenge Europe last weekend,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-844361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}