MOTORSPORT: More success for Aussie Matt Campbell

Already a Le Mans winner this year, Australian Matt Campbell has just won another 24-hour race in Europe.

Campbell was the professional among four drivers of a Porsche 911 GT3R that completed 677 laps of Barcelona’s 4.655km Circuit de Catalunya – home of the Spanish Formula 1 Grand Prix and a round of the MotoGP World Championship – to take victory by three minutes from a Ferrari 488.

While 23-year-old Campbell’s class success in this year’s World Endurance Championship – since Le Mans he’s also won a six-hour race in that series – has been with American actor Patrick Dempsey’s Porsche team, the Barcelona victory was with German team Herberth Motorsport in a separate endurance series.

The Porsche led 208 laps at the weekend to the Ferrari’s 377 laps, with time the 488 lost in the pits making the difference in the end.

The Porsche had started only ninth.

It was the 20th running of the Barcelona enduro and the 677 laps the Porsche completed was the most since the event was revived in 2011.

“It’s great to win this race again, for the second time since 2016. Hopefully one more time next year!” said German Alfred Renauer, a semi-professional co-driver of Campbell, while the other two – German Rolf Bohn and Swiss Daniel Allemann – were amateurs.

“It was really hard. In the first half of the race there was only one lap between us. So that was really tough to overcome, but we’re really happy!”

Campbell and his WEC co-drivers, experienced German Christian Ried and 19-year-old Frenchman Julien Andlauer, lead the GTE Am class in that series, with the next round a six-hour race at Fuji in Japan on October 14.

The WEC ‘super season’ extends to the next 24 Hours of Le Mans in mid-2019.