A frustrating weekend for the AMR runners as the GT Open Series visited the Hungaroring

It was something very much of a trying weekend for the Belgian based Street Art Racing team as they travelled to the fourth round of the GT Open Series and third round of the GT Cup Open Series from the Hungaroring, Hungary.

Having been forced again to skip the last round of the season at their local track of Spa Francorchamps a month ago, this weekend was only their second outing in the series with their respective Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 and GT4 race cars for their trio of drivers Pascal Bachmann, Julian Darras and Jahid Fazal-Karim.

Having never raced or tested at the circuit prior to the weekend, the team was immediately on the ‘back foot’ as a belated birthday celebration with the team prior to the event left the Swiss gentleman driver very much ‘under the weather’ going into the weekend – so much so that he decided to employ the racing services of Darras within his Vantage GT3 to firstly lessen his own workload within his car (as otherwise competing as a solo driver) and to get some sort of return for the cost of travelling there as well as some reward for previous services towards Darras.

For this round only though, the #007 SAR Vantage GT3 wasn’t the sole Aston Martin competing as the locally based GFS Motorsport’s V12 Vantage GT3 was also in attendance with driver Janos Santa.

With the newer variant of the AMR GT3 always chasing a viable race set up around the low grip, low passing opportunity circuit as well as the older variant simply not having the power available from its V12 engine to compete, both races proved to be frustrating exercises for the two solo Am based drivers in their GT3 cars.

Whilst Darras did compete within the #007 car in their reclassified Pro-Am class, to arrive and drive your first GT3 race was sadly for him something that didn’t transpire into a memorable experience as in the first race, contact with the #11 directly lead to the cars downfall on the very last lap.

Similar experiences were had by Darras and his gentleman driver Fazal-Karim after their green liveried #007 car showed the signs of front-end contact during the opening half of the first race of the GT Cup Open Series. Despite the teams Aston Martin being the sole non-Porsche platform in the series again, the driving capabilities of their Am driver so far has not yet progressed enough for them to be race contenders.

For their efforts, the #27 GFS Aston Martin was certainly the most consistent with an overall P18 and P20 finishes over the two races but with the #007 GT3 improving upon their DNF of race 1 to finish P16 overall in Sunday’s shorter race.

The next round of the two series will be at the Red Bull Ring in Austria for the GT3’s in early September before onto Monza for both series later that month.

Photo credits – GT Open / Open Cup / Team