All eyes look to Paul Ricard this weekend for Rd 2 GT World Challenge Europe and GT4 European Series
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
With just the three-hour race down under in New Zealand serving as a slight distraction, most of our attention this weekend will be focussed on the Circuit Paul Ricard in the south of France as nearly one hundred GT3 and GT4 race cars congregate for the second rounds of the GT World Challenge Europe and GT4 European Series respectively.
Amongst that satisfyingly strong number of entrants will again be the two Garage 59 Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3’s that compete within the GTWCE Endurance Cup Pro-Am and Silver classes as well as the six AMR Vantage GT4 cars that are entered from the likes of the AGS Events Racing, Mirage Racing, Street Art Racing and Racing One teams throughout the available Pro-Am, Silver and Am classes that are available to them.
At their opening rounds of the season at Monza in mid-April, the #188 Garage 59 GT3 of Alex West, Jonny Adam and Chris Goodwin of course came away with a class win after heavy rain shook up the proceedings whilst in the GT4 arena, only the #18 Racing One car of Henrik Lyngbye-Pederson and Marcus Lungstrass came away from Italy with any silverware with an Am Class P2 in race two after two, typical season opening races.
What’s happened since then is that Aston Martin Racing have recently announced their fourth intake for their Drivers Academy with eight racers within these eight cars now part of that factory supported driver development programme so we hope that many of those who made basic errors of judgement last time out to arrive in France with a new, refresh mindset.
With the GT4 European Series again supporting the bigger GT3 programme, will should be seeing the likes of Lyngbye-Pederson/Lungstrass return with the #18 car, the #45 car of Akhil Rabindra/Hugo Conde, #27 car Cesar Gazeau/Konstantin Lachenauer and #89 car of Nicolas Gomar/Eric Herr from the AGS Events team as well as the #7 Street Art Racing car of Pascal Bachmann/Paul Theysgens and the #55 Mirage race car of Ruben del Sarte/Tom Canning for that series two – one hour races which will this time both take place on Sunday.
That is because the GTWCE event will this time be its traditional six-hour race into Saturday night starting at 18:00hrs local.
Joining the #188 car of West/Goodwin/Adam will be the team’s Silver Cup crew of Valentin Hasse-Clot, Alex MacDowall and Nicolai Kjaergaard aboard the team’s #159 car.
All these races are available to view live via their series social media channels.
Photo credits – HoRT / AMR Australasia / GT4 European / GTWCE / Teams