Michele Beretta together with Hubert Haupt (GER), Sergey Afanasiev (RUS) and Gabriele Piana (ITA) won the 2020 Total 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps at the wheel of the Mercedes-AMG GT3 #5 entered by the Haupt Racing Team.
On a track made treacherous by the cold and the extremely variable weather conditions, a deserved victory arrived for Beretta and his team-mates. The Mercedes #5 started from 34th position on the grid and from the early stages of the race fought with Porsche and Lamborghini for the class leadership.
The battle was tight up to 2/3rds of the way through the race, when, one at a time, the rivals ran into mistakes that paved the way to success in the Silver Cup class for the HRT team’s Mercedes, which entered into the Top 20 (18th).
After the success in the 72nd edition of the Total 24 Hours of Spa, Beretta doesn’t hide the problems encountered due to variable weather that made the race on the Ardennes track even more difficult: “It was a race particularly difficult due to the rain and cold; in such extreme conditions we had to drive to the limit because we were fighting for first position with Barwell Motorsport’s Lamborghini. As long as our rivals remained in the race (17th hour), in each turn I drove as if I were in qualifying; in such changing grip conditions, on a fast track like Spa, it was really tough. After our direct rivals’ retirement, we adopted a conservative strategy and the team was always ready and reacted to every situation impeccably. At the end we sacrificed our overall position to avoid taking risks and we aimed for the result we had as our goal: the victory in the Silver Cup.”
