Karen Gaillard takes first victory in Porsche Sprint Challenge Suisse at Red Bull Ring

Karen Gaillard secured her first win of the season, as well as a second place, during the Porsche Sprint Challenge Suisse round at the Red Bull Ring, where she demonstrated great pace, good defensive moves and brilliant restarts. 

Photo credits: Alexis Goure

Karen Gaillard secured her first win of the season, as well as a second place, during the Porsche Sprint Challenge Suisse round at the Red Bull Ring. She demonstrated great pace, good defensive moves and brilliant safety car restarts. 

Gaillard had started her Porsche Sprint Challenge Suisse season in Portimão, where she scored her maiden pole position in Porsche machinery, although in the races, after a string of misfortunes, she couldn’t take the chequered flag. Despite that, she showed good pace, as well as some great overtaking manoeuvres. 

Apart from racing in the Swiss series, Karen competes with Schumacher CLRT in the Porsche Carrera Cup France, which uses the same Porsche 992 GT3 Cup cars as PSCS. Earlier this year, the Swiss also made her debut in the IMSA SportsCar Championship during the famous 24 Hours of Daytona, in which she drove for the main line up of the all-female Iron Dames entry.

From the beginning, this weekend wasn’t an easy round for Karen Gaillard, as an injury to her foot forced to change her braking style. "It was also a bit of a challenging weekend and I had to adapt, to change my way of driving because I always break with my right foot. Now I had to change to the left because I got a bit injured in my right foot. So just to tell that we are Iron Dames, we never, ever give up and hard work always pays off." – the Swiss driver said.

In the Thursday private practice she finished all three sessions in the top 10, staying close with the drivers ahead. She kept the momentum going into Friday free practice, in which she finished in the front positions, most of the time losing less than a second to the first place—clearly showing that she will fight for good points during the races.

All of the important sessions happened on Saturday, and for Gaillard the day started with qualifying. The Proton Huber Competition driver went out on track with 20 minutes to go, and after having her first competitive lap time deleted, she crossed the line with a 1:32.445 lap time, which had put her in P1, after Ethan Ischer’s provisional pole time had also been deleted. 

With 10 minutes to go, Ischer again went fastest, but got his time deleted in the same moment as Gaillard improved her lap time with a 1:32.074. Ischer finally got a counted lap with 8 minutes to go, when he went fastest, with his lap being 0.241 seconds quicker than Gaillard’s. Later on, Dylan Yip—the championship leader—had gone out on track and instantly went fastest, but with 5 minutes to go Gaillard improved to second place with a 1:31.701 time. In the dying minutes of the qualifying session, the Swiss driver did not improve, while Matteo Segre did and overtook Karen Gaillard on the timesheets. Gaillard finished her great qualifying session in P3, with a 0.298s behind her teammate, Dylan Yip.

Photo rcedits: Alexis Goure

The first race began at 11 a.m. local time, and it was a very intense start. The poleman—Dylan Yip—dropped to P4 and Karen Gaillard made her way to second position, with the Italian Matteo Segre leading the way. For the next few laps she stayed very close to the back of the Porsche driven by Segre, while Peter Hegglin and Ethan Ischer were battling for P3, giving Gaillard space behind.

On lap 5 Segre started pulling ahead of Gaillard and Ischer started closing in to the Swiss driver. The following lap, the Proton Huber Competition driver had to defend from her countryman, as he was less than half a second behind her. This battle continued for the next five laps, after which Gaillard started slowly, but surely pulling away from Ischer. In the meantime, Segre created a 2 second gap at the front of the pack.

The race calmed down after lap 10, when there were stable gaps in the top 3, but Yip, who lost three positions at the start, was determined to get them back. He gained the fastest lap, but wasn’t able to close down to Ischer enough. Gaillard had again started feeling the breath of Ischer behind her, as he got closer and closer to the Iron Dames-supported driver.

Lap 15 brought a lot of emotions to the race, as Hegglin, who was battling for places in the top 5, had spun in Turn 4. Despite that, no yellow flags were shown as he was able to get going again. In the following lap, Segre made a mistake that dropped him behind Gaillard and Ischer: with that, Karen Gaillard was now leading the first race of Porsche Sprint Challenge Suisse at the Red Bull Ring.

The remaining laps were very chaotic: Dylan Yip overtook Matteo Segre for P3, and got engaged in a battle for P2 with Ethan Ischer. There were a lot of contacts during this battle, which allowed Gaillard to create a one second gap ahead of the rest. The race ended with Karen Gaillard winning, ahead of Segre and Ischer. The Iron Dames driver racing with the No. 85 car showed consistent pace and great defending moves in the battle with Ischer. This was the first ever win in her GT career.

Photo credits: Iron Dames

Despite originally getting 2nd position for the Race 2 starting grid, based on the second best lap from qualifying, after a penalty for Dylan Yip, Karen Gaillard would start the race—which began around 3 p.m. local time—from pole position. The start wasn't very successful however, as Gaillard lost the lead to Segre. Nevertheless, she remained in a podium position. In turn 3, Dylan Yip was clipped by Matteo Beretta, and trying to avoid the crash, Gregor Burkard and Christof Langer collided.

The safety car was out on track, and racing resumed on lap 4. Segre went wide in turn 1, but kept the lead, despite getting a warning for track limits. Gaillard, meanwhile, had to defend from Ethan Ischer, who was the quickest driver on track. On lap 5 he overtook Gaillard by getting two wheels on the grass before turn 3, then he went past Matteo Segre and launched ahead of the pack in the front.

Segre and Gaillard remained close for the remaining laps, with Matteo Beretta also wanting to join the battle. Disaster struck Matteo Segre, as the Italian driver got a 5-second time penalty for track limits. This gave Karen Gaillard second place on the finish line.

Overall, this round has been very positive for the Swiss driver. "It was a very positive weekend. I got two nice trophies, P1 and P2. My first time on this track, on the Red Bull Ring – and it's my first win. I will remember it for a long time, for sure." – Karen Gaillard commented.

After this round Karen Gaillard is expected to focus on her main campaign in Porsche Carrera Cup France. Her next race will happen in June, during the Spa round of the French one-make Porsche championship, in which Gaillard sits fifth in the rookie classification.