Westbrook Wins in France

Richard Westbrook took a superb second win for Porsche in the FIA GT Championship at Nogaro on Sunday after fighting a thrilling defensive battle against an army of Ferraris.

The Porsche works driver triumphed at the twisty circuit, in the rural French region of Gascony, in his Prospeed Competition Porsche 997 GT3-RSR. Londoner Westbrook qualified on pole position, which came as something of a surprise. “Nogaro has a strange track surface and it eats up tyres,” he said. “It’s no secret that the Porsche is a little harder on its tyres than the Ferrari. We struggled in practice but the team changed quite a lot for qualifying. It was a bit of guesswork and we’d have been happy to be in the top four – we certainly never expected to be on pole by four tenths!

The engineers and mechanics did a great job and it was lovely to get my first FIA GT pole.” Westbrook leapt away at the start and built up a lead. “I got the gap as high as eight seconds, but when you’re that quick at the start you get the bill later on. The drop-off on the Ferraris’ tyres was less than ours and I lost the lead to Tim Mullen towards the end of my stint.”

With regular co-driver Emmanuel Collard away on American Le Mans Series duty for Porsche, Richard was joined this weekend by Australian Alex Davison. “The guys did a really good stop and got Alex out in the lead and he didn’t put a foot wrong. Then we had another quick stop when I got back in the car, but it wasn’t as quick as Gianmaria Bruni’s.”

Sure enough, the Ferrari of champions-elect Bruni and Toni Vilander had just leapfrogged the Porsche at the second stops. “There was no need to panic because I felt I had the beating of him, but then I got really badly baulked by an Aston Martin we were lapping. After he blocked me we collided and I lost 10 seconds. That really annoyed me, it knocked the suspension geometry out and it meant I had four Ferraris right on my tail.”

There was further drama, as it became apparent that leader Bruni was struggling with grip. “I had to defend like hell in a car that was now difficult to drive because of the damage,” said Richard. “I could see Bruni having problems in front and I knew I had to be the first in line for when we got him. I defended like crazy and got Bruni on the last lap.”

In a thrilling finish, the top four crossed the line covered by just seven tenths of a second. “It was a win we were confident of,” said Westbrook, “but we didn’t expect to win it like that! The team really deserved this, we’ve been knocking on the door for a while now and we’ve backed that up with a superb victory.”

Next race is at Zolder in Belgium in two weeks’ time, the home track of the Prospeed team and one where Westbrook is confident of doing well and grabbing second spot in the championship.

• Nogaro