Lukas Dunner, in his first full season of racing in three years, returned to Motopark after last competing with them in 2020. The Austrian scored two podiums and finished ninth in the standings after finishing no lower than fifth in the final three rounds.
By Marco Albertini
Dunner competed in single-seaters from 2017 to 2020, during which he took third and runners up spots in Euroformula Open in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
Dunner scored four wins in his final year of single-seaters | Credit: Euroformula Open Championship
In parallel to his 2020 Euroformula Open campaign, Dunner competed in F3 with MP Motorsport. He finished 27th in the standings, scoring a best result of 12th in the Hungarian sprint, where he avoided chaos at the start to climb eight positions by the end of the race.
Following his exit from single-seater competition, Dunner competed “for fun” in the Mitropa Rally Cup, which he won. However, it wouldn’t be until late 2023 when the Vienna-born driver would return to circuit racing, competing in the final round of that year’s International GT Open season with Motopark.
Rejoining the team he finished runner-up with three years earlier in Euroformula Open and paired up with Morten Strømsted, – father of current FR European rookie champion, Noah – the pair finished tenth and 13th in the two races, but wouldn’t get points as they were guest drivers.
Continuing their partnership with Motopark, Dunner and Strømsted joined bronze-rated Heiko Neumann for the full Asian Le Mans Season in the GT class.
The trio scored a best finish of 13th – at the 4 Hours of Dubai – and finished 21st in the teams’ standings.
Dunner’s first season in GT Open
Two months after the AsLMS finale, Dunner entered his first full season of GT Open competition. Staying with Motopark, he initially teamed up with Charles Bateman, with whom he would score a best result of fifth, in the opening race of the season, at Algarve.
Ahead of the GT Open 500 at Spa, Bateman was replaced by Lorenzo Fluxá. Despite a retirement in the race, results would improve from the next round onwards, scoring another fifth place at Paul Ricard and leaving the French round 13th in points as he headed to the Red Bull Ring.
In the first qualifying session of the weekend, on Saturday, Dunner set the fourth best time, putting the #96 Mercedes AMG GT3 Evo on the second row, as the best Motopark car.
Race one, held later that Saturday, Dunner passed the #16 AF Corse Ferrari driven by Allam Khodair in the first laps to get up to third. After a safety car restart though, the #15 Car Collection Porsche of Nico Menzel passed the Austrian after the latter went wide in turn six.
Dunner held on to third until Fluxá got in the car with half of the race remaining. Exiting the pits in sixth place, the Spaniard got past the #777 Olimp Racing Audi of Marcin Jedlinski to take fifth, which he would hold on to as the race ended.
On Sunday morning, the second round of qualifying took place and this time it was Fluxá’s turn to qualify the car, but after struggling with the car, he set the 18th best time.
The #96 of Dunner/Fluxá at the Red Bull Ring | Credit: International GT Open Championship
Speaking with Dunner before the race, he said about the weekend: “Yesterday, I don’t know how, the whole day was dry, today we had a lot of rain but right now it’s fine. I cannot say anything [bad] because yesterday without any rain was perfect.”
“Lorenzo will start the race, [he] didn’t have a good quali at all, struggled a bit with the car. Depending on how the rain is, it will be very interesting, anything can happen, maybe we’ll get some luck but we also have to take care of the car. We’ll see where the rain will put us and when I’ll get in the car, I’ll try to get as far in front as possible.”
In race two, from 18th, Fluxá made up two positions at the start and ran consistently in the top 15 before the pit cycle, where he would give the car to Dunner for the final half of the race.
Dunner exited the pits in 16th and quickly made progress, moving up to seventh after the pit cycle ended and attacking the #19 Oregon Lamborghini of Artem Petrov in the last quarter of the race.
With the Israeli-licenced driver struggling to get past the #27 AF Corse Ferrari of Marco Pulcini, Dunner passed Petrov on the run up to turn three.
On the following straight, Pulcini lifted to let Dunner and Petrov by, moving them up to fifth and sixth respectively.
Dunner remained unchallenged for the rest of the race, gaining four seconds on the Oregon Lamborghini in the final ten minutes of the race to finish fifth, leaving his home race eleventh in points with two rounds remaining.
Achieving the #96’s first podium of the season
For the following round in Barcelona, Dunner was joined by Julian Hanses, while for the final round of the season in Monza, the Austrian was joined by former Porsche Supercup driver, Jakub Giermaziak.
At Barcelona, the #96 finished fourth in race one and took its first podium of the season, finishing second ahead of the #1 Eastalent Audi in the safety car-ended race.
Hanses and Dunner on the Podium in Barcelona | Credit: International GT Open Championship
The Monza finale saw even more progress, with the #96 Motopark AMG qualifying on pole on aggregate times and finishing third in the 500km race.
On his full-time return to racing, Dunner finished the season ninth in the standings on 78 points, just three points shy of the #17 Motopark AMG driven by Diego Menchaca and 2016 Italian F4 champion, Marcos Siebert.
Header image credit: International GT Open Championship
