Dean Vella won the GT3 round of the Malta National Sim Racing Championships 2026 at the Red Bull Ring, his first victory of the season, and left Austria as championship leader for the first time.
Vella took pole by nearly three tenths, led throughout the 21 laps and held Jake Sammut off by 0.600 seconds at the flag. Brandon Bonello completed the podium after keeping Aaron Debattista behind him for most of the race.
Debattista, who had won the opening two rounds, finished fourth. He arrived eight points clear and leaves three points down, with Vella now on 82 to his 79 and Sammut third on 70.
Vella takes pole by nearly three tenths
Round three moved the championship onto the McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, the third car of the season after the Mercedes-AMG at Spa and the BMW M4 at Imola, and onto a circuit where a lap takes under 90 seconds and the tow is worth real time.
Qualifying ran for 10 minutes on a 28C track. GT3 tyres take most of that to reach their operating window, so the session worked backwards from the flag, with the fastest laps coming last.
Vella improved on almost every run and ended on a 1:29.234. Sammut was second on a 1:29.516, with Mikhail Mercieca third on a 1:29.663 and Bonello fourth on a 1:29.670, the pair split by seven thousandths.
Debattista qualified fifth on a 1:29.744 and abandoned his final run, the first time this season the championship leader had started outside the top three. Ilan Dimech Ghirxi was sixth on a 1:29.782, ahead of Krisztian Kavai, Sheldon Scott Muscat, Jayden Ellul and Neil Gauci.
The session was untidy at both ends. Ellul hit the wall hard at Turn 8, Muscat put his car into the barrier at the final corner, and Kavai coasted to the line out of fuel.
A start that decided the race
The race got away on a rolling start, and Vella timed it better than anyone. Only Sammut went with him. By the exit of the first corner the front two had a gap, and they kept it for the remaining half hour.
Sammut had the better of the opening lap and drew alongside at Turn 4, then again at Turn 6. There was nowhere to go on the inside line, the two touched on the exit, and the contact settled Vella’s car rather than unsettling it.
From there it became a tyre management exercise rather than a fight. The gap sat between half a second and one and a half seconds for most of the distance, close enough to keep Vella honest and never close enough for Sammut to attack. Vella set the fastest lap of the race, a 1:29.029.
The two drivers took opposite approaches to the track limits, and the incident counts show it: Vella finished on 12 incident points, Sammut on four.
“He was pushing me a lot throughout the whole race, so it wasn’t easy at all,” Vella said. “We might not have fought on track, but pace management and tyre management was essentially the whole race.”
Sammut saw the same race from the other side. “He was lapping a bit faster than me in the middle part of the race,” he said. “I just looked at the timings. He has 12 incident points, I have four. I kept it more clean. Maybe that is something I need to work towards, to use more and abuse more the track.”
Bonello’s defence holds Debattista off
The race behind the leaders was the one that mattered for the championship, and it turned into a single long stalemate.
Debattista started fifth and first had to deal with Mercieca. He tried the inside at Turn 3, the outside at Turn 6, and eventually made it stick around the outside of Turn 7, running to the edge of the gravel to hold the line. It took several laps and cost him time he did not have.
That left Bonello, and Bonello did not yield. He covered the inside into Turn 1, held the middle of the road on the approach to Turn 4, and declined to defend when Debattista showed a nose without the run to back it up. Debattista outbraked him into Turn 4 on one attempt and still lost the place back on the exit. On another he was squeezed wide at Turn 6 and dropped into the gravel.
With a lap and a half to go, Debattista finally got down the inside at Turn 4. The two made contact, he ran wide onto the dusty part of the circuit, and he picked up a track-limits slowdown penalty for it. With the clock inside a minute there was no lap left to recover.
Bonello finished third, 9.627 seconds behind the winner and 1.171 ahead of Debattista. It is his first podium of the season, after scoring nothing at Spa and 10 points at Imola.
“I was a bit aggressive, but these cars are all about being aggressive and fair,” Bonello said. “He has a championship to lose. I don’t. So I had nothing to lose at that point. My past two races weren’t the results I wanted, so I wanted to make sure I get a result today. After all, I won this championship last year. I know I can do it.”
Mercieca and Dimech Ghirxi take each other out
Behind them, Mercieca and Dimech Ghirxi spent most of the race a car length apart. Dimech Ghirxi tried the inside, the outside and the switchback at four different corners across a dozen laps. Mercieca defended each one, twice running him wide enough to put him over the kerbs and once into the gravel.
It ended at Turn 1. Dimech Ghirxi went around the outside, Mercieca held his line, and both cars went into the wall with heavy damage. Race control reviewed it and took no further action, treating it as a racing incident.
Mercieca did not finish, classified eighth with 18 laps. Dimech Ghirxi continued with a broken car and then served a drive-through for exceeding the incident limit, finishing sixth and 43.441 seconds down. Both were fighting for fourth in the championship at the time.
Muscat took fifth out of it, a gain of three places, and his 1:29.442 was the third fastest lap of the race despite qualifying eighth. Gauci completed the full distance in seventh, 1:01.868 back.
Ellul was the first retirement, into the barriers on the exit of the final corner after 10 laps. Kavai stopped after 14.
Where the championship stands
Vella’s 30 points led the round, ahead of Sammut on 26, Bonello on 22 and Debattista on 19. Muscat scored 16, Dimech Ghirxi 14, Gauci 12, Mercieca 10 and Kavai eight.
Vella leads on 82 points from Debattista on 79 and Sammut on 70. Mercieca is fourth on 48 from Dimech Ghirxi on 46 and Muscat on 42, with Bonello on 32, Gauci on 30, Kavai on 26 and Ellul on 22.
Three rounds have produced three different winners, and the top three are now covered by 12 points with two rounds to run. Debattista has gone from a perfect record to a round in which he was stuck behind the same car for 20 minutes.
“I’ve been improving every race, two second places and one win, so I believe I have the shot to win the next race as well and hopefully the championship,” Vella said. “You never really get to relax, because the field is very tight.”
Round four is at Watkins Glen on 3 October in the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo, with the season finishing at Silverstone on 31 October. Commentary came from Jake Sparey and John Harris.
The Malta National Sim Racing Championships 2026 are sanctioned by the Malta Motorsport Federation. This championship is supported by GamingMalta as part of its commitment to Malta’s grassroots esports community.
