Antonella Bassani secures maiden Carrera Cup podium with stellar performance at Le Mans
- RACERS
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Antonella Bassani enjoyed a breakthrough weekend at the Circuit de la Sarthe, as the Brazilian star displayed one of her strongest performances of her season to date, culminating in a remarkable second-place finish and her first-ever Carrera Cup podium on one of the most iconic circuits in the world.
Antonella Bassani enjoyed a breakthrough weekend at the Circuit de la Sarthe as the Porsche Carrera Cup Brasil made its historic debut at the 24 Hours of Le Mans as a support event. The Brazilian driver displayed one of her strongest performances of her season to date, culminating in a remarkable second-place finish and her first-ever Porsche Carrera Cup podium on one of the most iconic circuits in the world.
The event marked a significant milestone for Porsche Carrera Cup Brasil, as it was the championship's first-ever visit to Le Mans and its second trip to Europe after racing in Portugal in 2025. Racing as part of the support programme for the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans provided an extraordinary opportunity for the series and its drivers to compete in front of the international endurance racing paddock at one of the world's most prestigious motorsport events.
For Bassani, the weekend represented her first experience around the daunting 13.6-kilometre Circuit de la Sarthe, a challenge she embraced immediately. The opening practice session in fact provided drivers with their first opportunity to learn the legendary French circuit, combining a permanent race track sections with public roads including the famous Mulsanne Straight.
Despite it being her first laps at Le Mans, Bassani immediately showed encouraging pace and finished sixth overall in FP1. Her best time left her only around two seconds away from the fastest driver in the session.
The second practice session proved more complicated, as drivers continued pushing the limits around the circuit, and Bassani spent much of the session exploring the boundaries of the track and learning where she could maximise lap time.
Qualifying on Thursday morning provided Bassani with an opportunity to demonstrate the speed she had shown in practice. She immediately established herself among the frontrunners: running as high as second in the early stages, Bassani remained inside the top five throughout much of the session. Her best lap of 4:06.107 kept her near the front of the field.
As track conditions improved and times continued to fall in the closing minutes, several rivals managed late improvements. Bassani was unable to improve on her final runs and eventually slipped to eighth position. Nevertheless, it remained a highly encouraging qualifying result and secured a strong starting position especially for race 2.
Race one took place under threatening skies, with a few light drops of rain appearing on the grid before quickly disappearing. Starting eighth, Bassani initially lost a position to Salmen at the start - however, she immediately fought back and reclaimed the place by the end of the first sector, maintaining eighth position through the opening sequence of corners.
With slipstreaming playing a major role around the long Le Mans straights, Salmen and Salles were able to use the draft to move back ahead, dropping Bassani further down the order. An early yellow flag was required following an incident involving Fassbender, and by this stage Bassani found herself behind Fantin in eleventh position.
The situation quickly improved when Vivacqua encountered problems and was forced to pit, promoting Bassani into tenth place by the end of the opening lap. On lap two she began her recovery.
First, she overtook Salmen to move back into ninth. One lap later she completed another pass on Salles, climbing into eighth and continuing her charge through the field.
A slow zone was then deployed after Morestoni became stranded in the gravel, temporarily neutralising the action. Once racing resumed, Bassani focused on catching Mariotti, with the leading six drivers beginning to edge away while Bassani headed a competitive second group.
Further ahead, Regadas ran through the grass while battling for fifth position but managed to keep his car under control. The incident brought Mariotti closer to Regadas, and Bassani continued closing in behind them while Pipo Massa joined the battle.
The fight intensified: Mariotti overtook Regadas but then made a mistake at Tertre Rouge, allowing Regadas back through. Bassani remained directly behind the pair, patiently waiting for an opportunity.
That opportunity arrived on lap nine, as Mariotti dropped backwards, Bassani moved up to seventh position and immediately focused on the fight for the top six.
Her pace suggested she could potentially challenge for the top five positions; ahead was Pipo Massa, around one second further up the road.
Another yellow flag followed when Paulo Sousa spun into the gravel, but Bassani remained focused on closing the gap to Massa as the race entered its final stages.
While a thrilling battle for victory unfolded at the front between Muller and Giassi, with Giassi eventually securing the win by just one tenth of a second, Bassani produced a strong final lap. She closed to within a tenth of Massa by the chequered flag but ran out of time to attempt a pass.
Seventh place at the finish line, a post race penalty promoted Antonella to sixth - which represented a highly competitive result in her first Carrera Cup race at Le Mans, placing her among the front-runners and with a strong shot at Race 2 on Saturday.
Saturday morning in fact brought one of the biggest opportunities of Bassani's career: thanks to the reverse-grid format, she inherited pole position for Race 2, marking her first pole position in Porsche Carrera Cup Brazil's top class.
With the atmosphere around Le Mans building ahead of the start of the 24 Hours itself, the second Carrera Cup race became one of the highlights of the support programme.
Lingering barrier repairs from an earlier incident meant the race began under slow zone conditions.
Bassani led the field away before green flag were finally waved on the Mulsanne Straight.
She made a clean restart and retained the lead into the first chicane, with Paludo immediately applying pressure behind.
Initially, Bassani successfully defended the position, however, a slightly wide moment at Mulsanne Corner opened the door, as Paludo and Fantin both slipped through, dropping Bassani to third place.
Rather than panic, however, Bassani immediately went on the attack. The leading trio remained covered by only a few tenths of a second before another slow zone was introduced following incidents involving Sousa and Gaidzinski.
At the restart, Paludo and Fantin managed to gain a slight advantage, but Bassani remained attached to the leading battle. On lap three, the leaders missed the Mulsanne chicane, allowing Bassani to close the gap again. At the same time, she began pulling away from Regadas and Muller behind.
Muller closed onto her rear bumper, but a mistake by the chasing driver at the first chicane allowed Bassani to rebuild her advantage. Meanwhile, Fantin overtook Paludo for the race lead, bringing the leaders closer together once again and giving Bassani another chance to attack.
A stronger restart from the following slow zone saw Bassani challenge Paludo directly. The experienced driver responded by using his push-to-pass boost down the straight and reclaimed the position, while simultaneously overtaking Fantin to regain the lead. Regadas had joined the battle as well but was handed a drive-through penalty and served it on lap five, removing one contender from the lead fight.
The decisive moment of Bassani's race came on lap six: exiting Tertre Rouge perfectly, she used the draft to launch an attack on Paludo down the Mulsanne Straight. Running side-by-side, she nearly completed the move before being forced to back out initially. However, she wasn't finished and, carrying the momentum into the second chicane, Antonella executed a superb overtaking move to secure second place.
Now free of Paludo, she immediately focused on race leader Fantin. The pace was very competitive: during the second sector she gained approximately half a second on the leader and reduced the gap to only 1.4 seconds by the end of lap seven.
Soon the gap was down to one second, while at the same time Bassani was pulling away from the cars behind. As the race entered its final lap, the young Brazilian pushed hard in pursuit of victory.
Ultimately, she could not get quite close enough to launch a challenge for the lead, but the result hardly diminished the achievement.
Bassani crossed the finish line in second place, securing her first-ever Porsche Carrera Cup podium.
To achieve the career milestone at Le Mans, in front of the global motorsport audience gathered for the 24 Hours, made the result even more significant.
"The second race was very difficult for me because of the slow zones", Antonella said after her historic result. "It was the first time I had raced with this format and I was always thinking about not taking a penalty. I made two mistakes, one on the first lap and another on the third lap, and because of that I lost several positions."
"But after that I had a really good race and really good pace. I was able to recover and finish in P2.
I also made a really good overtake and I enjoyed the race a lot. It was a very fun race here at Le Mans", she continued.
"I'm so happy to be here. Le Mans has so much history and it's very special for me. This year Mobil1 and Porsche are celebrating 30 years together and it was great to share this event with my sponsors."
"After a difficult first round at Interlagos, these points are very important for the championship. Now I think I'm fifth in the standings and I can keep fighting for the title when we return for the final rounds."
"Getting my first podium here is very special", Bassani reflected on what just happened, in the biggest arena of motorsport. "I don't know exactly why, but every time Porsche [Brazil] comes to Europe I seem to get good results."
"I don't really have the words to describe what this means. Finishing second at Le Mans is something very special for me. I know many people from WEC and other teams were watching the race, so I think it was a good race for me and a good race for Porsche. This podium here at Le Mans means a lot."
Antonella Bassani definitely left a mark with a breakthrough podium in Race 2 and a significant boost to her championship campaign, in a weekend she is unlikely to forget.