This weekend's weekly round up of AMR runners around the world
Monday, October 17, 2022
Starting in Japan, the D’Station Racing team raced out their penultimate round of the Super Taikyu Series from Okayama and came away with a P3 finish overall and within their ST-X class for their AMR Vantage GT3 crew of Satoshi Hoshino, Tomonobu Fujii and Tsubasa Kondo after technical issues with the car lost them ground during that three-hour race. The teams ST-1 class Championship contending Vantage GT8R did not race at this event due to their class not being scheduled to complete although both cars are expected back for the season finale at Suzuka in late November.
The European Le Man Series and Le Mans Cup Series both raced out their final races of the season down in Portimao in Portugal with the AMR marque again being represented by both the Oman Racing with TF Sport Vantage GTE’s and the Bullitt Racing AMR Vantage GT3.
For the Spanish based Bullitt Racing team, their pain had already been suffered at the previous round at Spa when a pre-race incident for Stephen Pattrick lead to the #99 car that he shares with Valentin Hasse-Clot not being able to start and therefore lost all possibility of maintaining a class Championship charge at this final round.
With winter plans from the team still to be confirmed, a spin for Pattrick during Qualifying meant that they had to start the race from the very rear but a good recovery after the earlier red flag for an accident on the pit straight following an earlier Safety Car had put them at the front of the class, before the Frenchman’s final pass for the lead was over aggressive for which he was to serve a drive through penalty for avoidable contact.
They were to finish the race in fourth as Pattrick would within the GT3 Drivers Championship.
The two Oman Racing cars within the ELMS would be hoping for a better end to their topsy-turvey season after having already lost out on any further championship contention at the previous round at Spa as well.
Things were looking good for a time as the #69 of Ahmad Al Harthy / Sam de Haan / Marco Sorenson had Qualified fourth and was running line astern with their sister #95 car of John Hartshorne / Jonny Adam / Henrique Chaves until the dying moments of the race.
Whilst the #69 did succeed in claiming another podium finish to their year, the #95 car was involved in an unfortunate incident with an LMP3 car whilst being overtaken by an LMP2 car which lead to contact between the Aston and the LMP3 car to end each of their races within the gravel/barrier.
In the final races of the French FFSA GT4 Series from Paul Ricard, it was a great finale from the #74 Racing Spirit of Lemans AMR Vantage GT4 of Romain Carton and Victor Weyrich who took a pole position start in Saturday’s night race to a P2 finish before claiming a further P2 finish in Sundays final race of the season.
Whilst their sister #92 car of Ronald Basso and Sandro Perissouthi also claimed a class P2 finish on Saturday, the only championship contending crew – that of the #72 GPA Racing AMR of Kevin Jimenez and Florent Grizaud sadly failed in their quest to win the Am Class after only finishing in second in race 1 behind the then crowned class winning Audi (sounds familiar?)
That leaves just the GT Open and GT Open Cup Series that concluded at the Circuit de Catalunya with the Belgian Street Art Racing team fielding their Vantage GT3 and GT4 cars.
With neither being in any Championship contention, the #007 GT3 of Pascal Bachmann narrowly missed a second-class podium of the year, finishing P4 at the end of race 1 before ending the final race of his debut GT3 season in sixth.
The team’s GT4 crew of Julien Darras and Jahid Fazal Karim came back from their bruising round last time out at Monza to see out Karim’s first step up to GT4 racing with a P4 and then a podium P3 class finish to see out their year.
