Racing Spirit of Leman flying high in Magny-Cours

Sunday, May 07, 2023

This weekend’s second round of the French FFSA GT4 Series proved to be a more successful affair for the eight Aston Martin Racing powered teams entered after the opening round shenanigans from Nogaro were put behind them at Magny-Cours.

Racing around the more flowing former French Grand Prix circuit allowed the Aston Martin’s of the Racing Spirit of Leman, AGS Events Racing, GPA Racing and Mirage Racing to use the power characteristics of the Vantage GT4 V8 engine more effectively giving some of the crews front row starting positions ahead of each of the weekend’s one-hour long races.

The #7 Mirage of Louis Meric and Romain Carton were the front running silver class Aston in Silver whilst the #74 Racing Spirit of Leman car of Clement Dub and Ronald Basso were doing similar in their Am class.

Under the darkening skies of a Saturday afternoon start, race one got off to a faltering start as a three-car incident at turn one on the opening lap eliminated two cars including the #5 Mirage of David Kullmann where the clean-up operation lost a quarter of the available race time.

Going back to green, the #74 and #7 cars maintained that pace as the sister #6 Mirage car of Yves Lemaitre and Vincent Beltoise also fell by the wayside for an early DNF to allow the #7 Mirage car to claim a worthy P3 overall finish with the #74 picking up a second in Am.

With Qualifying for race 2 also happening on Saturday, the #74 would claim another front P3 start in Am whilst its sister #92 silver class car of Mateo Villagomez and Victor Weyrich claimed a front row start at the front in P2.

Going green in today’s race 2 saw an early wild ride through the gravel for the #89 AGS Events Racing Aston Martin of Higo Bac and Nicolas Gomar but this time they survived to race another lap as Villagomez pushed hard for the lead from the off.

The race was decided within the pit lane as the #92 RSLM and #17 BMW pitted at the same time for a drag race out which saw Weyrich being the quicker to react to assume the lead for the first time. Having lost out in race 1, the #5 Mirage car of Kullmann had a lucky escape with another gravel trap at the end of the lap after he was pushed wide and into the stones only to be narrowly avoided by the #89 AGS Events Aston as he re-joined the circuit.

A late Safety Car for another car in the gravel set up a final two lap dash to the flag for the #92 car but the RSLM team held their nerve as they came home for a double podium celebration with the #92 came home for a race win with the sister #74 also taking P3 in Am. It also saw the best result of the season so far for the AMR runners with this time only the #98 AGS Events Racing Am entry of Christophe Carriere and Didier Dumaine failing to finish.