Italy leads the medal table and the final day goes to the competition

Home country France led the way with triple gold on Saturday but were unable to add to their tally, while Belgium and Germany, along with Italy, had a successful final day.

Italy’s third gold was won by Andrea Kimi Antonelli in Sunday morning’s F4 Cup race. The Mercedes F1 junior dominated after an early safety car stint despite battling pain from a wrist injury sustained in a qualifying incident. Portugal’s Manuel Espirito Santo finished second ahead of Spain’s Bruno Del Pino Ventas.

France were denied a fourth gold in the junior karting final with Jules Carranta losing the road win after receiving a post-race penalty, with Peru’s Andreas Cardenas taking the win. The senior final was marred by a chaotic starting lap where 11 of the 30 starting pilots crashed. With leading contenders Nacho Tunon (Spain) and Joel Bergstom (Sweden) among the retirees in a battle for second place, Ellie Goldstein took a comfortable win from pole for Belgium.

It gave Belgium their second gold of the Games and, after securing pole in the Touring Car and GT Sprint races, it looked like Belgium would challenge France and Italy at the top of the medal table.

But, most importantly, she could not lead both poles to further triumph. Things went awry in the Touring Car competition, with Giles Magnus out of the lead as he completed the first lap of the main race, suffering the same driveshaft problems that other Audi drivers experienced over the weekend.

This handed the lead to Tom Coronel who controlled the rest of the meet to win a second gold for Team Netherlands. Ireland’s Jack Young finished second on the road, but a five-second penalty for an earlier incident with France’s Teddy Claret dropped him to third, handing silver to Spain’s Isidro Callejas Gomez.

Team Great Britain’s Chris Smiley recovered from a tough qualifying session to climb to 10th in the qualifying heat, before picking up another two places in the main race to finish eighth in the Honda Civic.

Belgian Dries Vantour slipped from first place to fifth at the start of the GT Sprint, as Matt Campbell grabbed a lead he would not relinquish to claim Australia’s first gold. Vanthoor recovered to finish third behind Mirco Bartolotti, whose second place saw Italy overtake France in the silver medal tally as the games drew to a close.

#4 Australia Porsche 911 GT3 R: Matt Campbell, GT Sprint Cup

Photo: SRO

The German national team won two gold medals in slalom and finished the games in fourth place with the Netherlands. His pairing of Marcel Helberg and Claire Schonborn were untouchable driving the electric Opel Corsa e-Rally, beating Slovakia’s Mihaela Dorczyk and David Nemcek in the auto slalom final.

The karting equivalent was won by Anika Spielberger and Sebastian Romberg, who faced the Belgians Romy De Groot and Dario Pemava in the final.

Great Britain finished sixth in the overall medal standings thanks to James Baldwin’s gold (eSports) and Ian Logie and Sam Neary’s bronze (GT Cup) on Saturday.