Jason Bell dominant in both GT America and GT4 Americas visit to Sebring
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
For those teams competing within the dual driver GT4 America Series, there was the bonus of competing within a third race over the weekend in order to make up for their second race lost due to the weather situation at Nola Motorsport Park back in April but for the others, it was still the usual two race programme.
A total of twelve Aston Martin Racing Vantage powered crews competed at the Sebring event, all within the current Vantage GT4 platform except for the #007 The Racers Group AMR Vantage GT3 of Derek DeBoer and Ross Gunn.
Gunn was back with the team, having started with them at the season opener at Sonoma but then stepping away as Valentin Hasse-Clot came aboard, but with the Frenchman otherwise detained at Spa Francorchamps in both the European Le Mans Series and Le Mans Cup Series endeavours – the pendulum swung back to Gunn.
Gunn was back with the team, having started with them at the season opener at Sonoma but then stepping away as Valentin Hasse-Clot came aboard, but with the Frenchman otherwise detained at Spa Francorchamps in both the European Le Mans Series and Le Mans Cup Series endeavours – the pendulum swung back to Gunn.
Unfortunately for these guys, both of their races were close but ‘no cigar’ as they say as the #007 finished P8 overall/P4 in their Pro-Am class after Saturday’s opener and then P10 overall/P5 in class to finish their weekend.
Within the GT4 America Series, five AMR Vantage GT4 crews competed within the two usual rounds but only four did within the Nola make up race. In that, the #8 Flying Lizard car of Elias Sabo and Andy Lee would claim another Pro-Am class win for their efforts with a P5 class finish for Gray Newell/Roman De Angelis aboard their #24 Heart of Racing AMR and a P10 class finish apiece for both the #26 Heart car of Rianna O’Meara-Hunt and Hannah Grisham and the #50 Chouest Povoledo AMR of Ross Chouest and Aaron Povoledo.
Into the actual two races of the penultimate round, it was a near clean sweep in class for the guesting #2 Flying Lizard car of Jason Bell and Michael Cooper with a P2 and P1 finishes but a painful early end for both Newell and Sabo in race one as both cars made contact with each other to end up heavily into the tyre wall together.
Things didn’t go too well for the remaining AMR crews either as the #50 Chouest Povoledo car did not better than P8 in class with the Am class #26 Heart car of Grisham/O’Meara-Hunt finishing P6 in race one with a DNF in race 2.
Then into the exciting rounds of the solo driven GT America Series saw the #2 Flying Lizard car of Jason Bell finally break free of the close attention of Ross Chouest and his #50 car for bell to score another P1 and P2 finishes in class against the P9 and P7 finishes in class for Chouest as the defending GT4 Champion showed the first signs of deterioration in his 2023 campaign.
The #009 The Racers Group AMR GT4 entry of Tim Savage showed their best performances to date with an impressive P6 and P4 collection over the weekend whilst the #45 Ruckus Racing entry of Scott Blind did likewise with a P7 and P6 finish as well. Whilst Sabo did manage to collect an earlier P3 finish in race one, he wasn’t able to start race 2 on Sunday due to being a car down after his earlier GT4 America smash with Newell so things remain very much a two-horse race as the 2023 concludes at the end of another two races at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in two weeks’ time.
Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media
