Oman Racing with TF Sport going for class titles in Blancpain GT finale
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Four rounds and thirty six hours of the most competitive GT3 racing later and Aston Martin Racing Partner team Oman Racing with TF Sport will go into this weekend's final round of the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup from the Circuit de Catalunya near Barcelona looking to secure both the Pro-Am Drivers and Pro-Am Team's Championships.
With the three full Pro line up AMR cars sadly already out of any title contention, this weekend sees the #97 Oman Racing with TF Sport car of Ahmad Al Harthy, Salih Yoluc and Charlie Eastwood seeking to maintain their slender points lead by the end of Sundays three hour race to claim these titles whilst the #188 Garage 59 Am Class car of Alex West, Chris Goodwin (with Chris Harris again along side) look to secure a further runners up position in their class after another difficult outing for the team last time out at Spa Francorchamps effectively ended their Championship aspirations.
This year is of course the first competitive season of the new AMR Vantage GT3 and already this year we have seen significant race and Championship accolades roll in from around the world with most recently TF Sport and Optimum Motorsport winning the ultimate overall and Silver Cup class honours in the British GT Championship giving the new turbo charged platform an early race pedigree to match that of the older normally aspirated V12 platform that it replaced.
As with every Championship, you have to be 'in it to win it' and that is precisely what both the #97 car has done throughout the season, sometimes in some very challenging track conditions (particularly at Monza at the opening round to the season back in April and most lately at the Spa 24) where the #97 car overcame early adversity to finally claim a class victory at the end of another weather affected event.
The #97 goes into the race with a 16 points lead in the Driver's title hunt and is also ahead by 14 points in the Teams championship and with up to 34 points being available everything is far from secure.
In the Pro class success hasn't exactly been very forthcoming for the three AMR Vantages from both Garage 59 and R-Motorsport. Irrespective of the huge amount of driving talent behind the wheel of the #62 and #76 R-Motorsport and #59 Garage 59 cars, the former have been dogged with late technical issues which have seen good runs come to nothing whilst the latter have found themselves to be in the wrong place at the wrong time sustaining race ending damage at an early stage to the race.
Whilst Mssrs Jonny Adam, Andrew Watson, Come Ledogar (#59) and Mathieu Vaxivierre, Matt Parry, Maxime Martin (#62) and Jake Dennis, Marvin Kirchhofer and Alex Lynn (#76) have no prospect of any final class title position we can be assured that all will be doing their utmost (for personal and professional pride if nothing else) to secure the top step of the podium at the end of Sundays three hour race.
With Championship nerves and potentially some more unsettled weather again over the Catalan circuit, it has all the ingredients for another exciting finale!
Track action begins as always with private testing being available on Thursday before the first of the official action beginning with the Bronze driver test on Friday evening. Saturday will feature both Free Practice and Pre Qualifying ahead of Sunday morning's three individual Qualifying sessions and the start of the final race of the 2019 season at 15:00hrs local.
Photo credits - Blancpain GT
