June Blog
11/06/2008The seasons well and truly in full-swing and on reflection 2008 has been very frustrating…….so far at least.
As most of you will probably know, my main focus this year is the FIA GT Championship, racing for Belgiums Prospeed Competition in the factory supported 911RSR with Manu Collard as my team mate. The championship is incredibly tough, particularly as we have 9 very strong Ferrari 430’s as our main competition.
Round 1 in Silverstone was the most frustrating race I’ve ever raced. Having qualified a strong 2nd on a track usually suited to the Ferrari we went into the race feeling pretty confident of a podium at the very least. Manu started the race and disaster struck on lap3 when a damper broke on the front left leaving us with a car that had no chance to lap anywhere near the pace. For 2 hours we had to drive this car nearly 3 seconds slower than the leading Ferrari and just to kick us when we were down the Stewards booted us out of the results completely when they deemed our car was below the minimum ride heights set in the regulation. Of course there was a perfectly good reason for this since our damper had broke but that didn’t matter and we lost 3 very precious points that could cost us dearly in the future.
Round 2 was in Monza and nothing but a win would do to kick start our season and get us back in the hunt for the championship. The team performed brilliantly and Manu and myself were quickest in every session, led from start to finish and won convincingly by around 15 seconds. It was an excellent result, leading a train of 9 Ferraris at their home track and one that really opened the Championship up to a mouth watering battle between Porsche and Ferrari. Unfortunately one of the Ferrari teams thought it would be a good idea to video our pit stops and after the race they produced the video to the stewards who then agreed that our fist pit stop had been illegal and duly kicked us out of the results.
As decisions go it was right up there with appointing Steve Mclaren as England coach and as much as I’d love to talk about it I can’t since we have appealed the decision and our awaiting the verdict from the FIA. Hopefully some common sense will prevail.
One of the few highlights of the season was competing in the Nurburgring 24hours for Hisaq competition at the famous old circuit. It really is an amazing event staged on such a special track, 230 cars racing into the night in front of over 200,000 spectators. We led for over 12 hours until a blown gearbox put us out of contention but I’ll never forget those 12 hours and myself, Marino, Frank, Manu and the whole team can be really proud at how we performed at such a tough event. I’ll definitely be back for that one next year.
Anyway, its Adria next for round 3 of the FIA Championship and until then I’m going to enjoy a much needed weekend off in front of telly supporting my Porsche mates Richard Lietz, Pat Long, Wolf Henzler, Jorg Bergmeister and Sasha Massen at the LeMans 24hours.