September has proved to be an exciting and genuinely intense month for the 2024 Porsche Carrera Cup Italia. The second half of the season opened with two events (Imola and Vallelunga) packed with twists and turns that shook up the standings.

At Imola on 7-8 September, the undisputed protagonist was two-time Carrera Cup France champion Marvin Klein, who secured two victories with Target Competition that took him to within a few points of then leader Larry Ten Voorde (who did not contest the round at the Emilia-Romagna circuit). Meanwhile, in the two races at Vallelunga on 21-22 September a pair of youngsters from the Scholarship Programme claimed the wins. After success in an eventful race 1 (following several penalties) for 18-year-old Dutch driver Flynt Schuring (Enrico Fulgenzi Racing), who claimed victory ahead of another youngster, Australian Bayley Hall (BeDriver), and German Lirim Zendeli (Ombra Racing), Janne Stiak responded in race 2 on Sunday. The 17-year-old German driver from Target Competition won on the Roman circuit and celebrated his first success in the Italian single-make series (after a similar feat in the German series two weeks earlier at the Sachsenring). He shared an all-new podium with Diego Bertonelli, who took second and his first podium of the season with The Driving Experiences, and Zendeli, third and winner of the new Rookie category, repeating his performance in race 1.

Away from the excellent progress shown by the talented youngsters, the chase for the overall title then came to the fore. Still leading the standings, at Vallelunga Ten Voorde wasted the two excellent pole positions he had secured during qualifying (including a new record for the latest generation 911 GT3 Cups of 1'33"582): in race 1 a jump start cost him a 10-second penalty, and in race 2 he made contact with Klein (a repeat of what happened in race 1, with Ten Voorde penalised by a further 25 seconds after the race). He was handed a five-second penalty, which relegated him to tenth place, a result that meant he lost the lead in the overall standings. With only the final and decisive round at Monza on 4-6 October to come, the new leader of the Carrera Cup Italia is Keagan Masters, who took advantage of difficult weekends for Ten Voorde and the blameless Klein. The 24-year-old South African of the Q8 Hi Perform Team only needed a fifth and a sixth place to overtake Enrico Fulgenzi Racing’s Dutch driver, albeit only by one point. Klein, meanwhile, is still hard on his heels, trailing by 12 points thanks to the fifth place he secured after recovering from the contact on the first lap in race 2.

All the titles in play will be decided at Monza. In the Rookie category, Zendeli is just a step away from winning after Francesco Braschi (Dinamic Motorsport) was unable to take advantage of a very competitive weekend, mainly due to contact made with Zendeli himself in race 1 – that infringement cost him the final victory. The Michelin Cup remains all to play for. At Monza, Francesco Fenici will arrive as category leader with Raptor Engineering after excellent results in the last races (two second places at Imola and a second place and a win on his home track at Vallelunga). However, he is not clear of the Ebimotors team's pair of drivers – reigning champion Alberto De Amicis, in constant contention for the podium, and Paolo Gnemmi, who returned to winning ways in race 1 at Vallelunga.