Oman Racing retrace their footsteps in Blancpain GT for 2019
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
Having endured a season last year of extreme bad luck but also under performance, yesterdays news of Oman Racing by TF Sport confirming their entry into the 2019 Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup sees the team return to the class of racing that has seen them perform so well in before.
Last years venture into the Silver Cup proved unsuccessful for drivers Ahmad Al Harthy, Charlie Eastwood and Euan McKay despite their on site mentoring from the teams 'resident professional' Jonny Adam so have decided to return to the series Pro-Am Class for 2019 - a class that has seen them perform so well in historically including taking the overall Class honours back in 2017.
During our visit to TF Sport HQ today, we understood from team principle Tom Ferrier that Al Harthy has been granted special dispensation by the SRO to run as a Bronze (Star) rated driver as opposed to his Silver ranking of last year but with a caveat of not being able to run a full factory professional driver alongside.
Not short of any top flight racing experience between them, Eastwood will be regarded as the Pro driver whilst Salih Yoluc joins the squad again, this time as a full season driver this and with his Bronze (amateur) status that his role affords him.
With TF Sport expanding to run two GT3's and two GT4's within the British GT Championship this year, it has already been decided that the car that Al Harthy, Darren Turner and Jonny Adam ran at last years Gulf 12Hours event will become a sole BGT car for both Adam and Graham Davidson whilst the team acquires a further Vantage GT3 platform solely for Ahmad and his Blancpain GT Series campaign. That will help the team with back to back race weekends when there is so little time between rounds or even in the face of adversity should one chassis become damaged.
That new car has yet to be delivered to the team hence their absence from the latest Blancpain GT test in Italy this week but they the trio did attend the recent series BoP test at Paul Ricard with both their available GT3 chassis.
The first round of the 2019 Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup takes place from Monza in little over three weeks time.
Photo credits - Gulf 12Hr /