Gran Premio Storico d’Italia 2026: Masters Endurance Legends 1 & 2

As the sun began to set on the memorable first day of racing at Mugello the Masters Endurance Legends set off for their first race of the weekend with Keith Frieser on pole in the Zytek 09 ahead of Werner d’Ansembourg in his Aston Martin DBR1 by 0.714 seconds.  Alex Kapadia qualified third in the Pescarolo 01 Oak but didn’t make the race due to a technical issue resulting in the stunningly beautiful Dallara-Corvette CR7 of Matteo Ferrer-Aza and Alex Müller starting third. The stage was set for a battle royale under the dramatic landscape of Mugello’s rolling Tuscan hills but it was not to be, as d’Ansembourg uncharacteristically left the track in the Aston Martin at T3 on the first lap making light contact with the tyre barrier and tragically, enough damage to take him out of the race. The Scott Sport had worked hard to repair some damage that was incurred in qualifying when the Chevrolet Corvette C7 had an unfortunate coming together with the Zytek in qualifying and Frieser’s lap times and progress remained unaffected. Olivier Morihain had his lap times from qualifying deleted and he started the race from the back of the grid. Keith made it a pretty straightforward sprint to the line untouched by the Ferrer-Aza/Muller threat – the pairing had to take a drive-through penalty after a short pit stop. The father and son pairing of Stephan and Matthias Jocher bagged GT3 honours in their Bentley Continental GT which relished the technical curves and flows of the Mugello circuit.

Sadly Sunday’s final race for the Endurance Legends category was plagued with mechanical issues which took a number of cars away from the final line-up and tragically Finn Wonnenberg’s V8Star Jaguar suffered a differential problem on the warm-up lap and had to retire to the pits. During the first half of the race Keith Frieser (who started on pole once again) and Matteo Ferrer-Aza traded fastest laps like a match of table tennis – the Dallara-Corvette was first to pit when the window opened.  With Frieser still on track it was at this point that he set a fastest lap of 1:43.6, and it was with this time that he went on to win ahead of Ferrer-Aza/Muller and Karl Pedraza in the Ligier JSP320. There was drama as Danny Baker spun off on the last lap in his Oreca 03.