Blancpain GT: Bleekemolen/Proczyk win Brands Hatch feature race

The Grasser Lamborghini driven by Jeroen Bleekemolen and Hari Proczyk dominated the main event of the Brands Hatch round of the Blancpain Sprint Series.

Bleekemolen and Proczyk followed up on their victory in the morning qualifying race by leading all but four laps on the way to a four-second victory in the full-points race in the afternoon. Proczyk converted pole position into the lead of the race and was able to keep his Lamborghini Gallardo FLII ahead of Maximilian Buhk's HTP Motorsport Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG to the mandatory stops.

A quick turnaround in the pits by the Austrian Grasser team got Bleekemolen out with an advantage of just over three seconds over the BMW Team Brazil entry that Valdeno Brito had just taken over from Matheus Stumpf. The chasing Brito, who had leapfrogged the HTP Mercedes in the pits, had slipped to more than five seconds behind the leader when he had to bring his BMW Z4 into the pits for a drive-through after a pit stop infringement was called.

Maximilian Gotz took over second position in the HTP entry but was unable to make any inroads into Bleekemolen's lead until the Dutchman backed off in the closing stages.

Bleekemolen paid tribute to the Grasser team after the race for its quick pit stop and for fixing a problem with a rear hub that almost prevented the car from making it onto the grid.

"The team won the race for us today," he said. "They had 14 minutes to fix the car before the pitlane closed. I couldn't believe that they did it and then those same guys were amazing at the pit stop."

The second Brazilian BMW moved up to third in the hands Sergio Jimenez and Caca Bueno after its sister car was penalized.

The pole-winning WRT Audi R8 LMS recovered to fourth in Laurens Vanthoor's hands after he took over from Cesar Ramos.

Alex Zanardi came from the back to fifth in his ROAL Motorsport BMW Z4. The Italian – who drives alone in his specially modified car with hand controls – finished just head of Silver Cup winners Vincent Abril and Mateusz Lisowski in their WRT Audi.

Pro-Am honors again went to the Phoenix Audi shared by Marc Basseng and Alessandro Latif.