A tough weekend at the office for the Comtoyou Racing Team in Sprint Cup
Sunday, July 21, 2024
The biggest surprise for this round was the number of times the SRO visited that touchy subject of Balance of Performance during the meeting, something which eventually saw the series adjust that of the AMR Vantage GT3’s BoP three times in a quest for their infamous parity amongst brands.
Despite arriving at the circuit as newly crowned Spa 24 Champions, qualifying for the opening hour-long race on Saturday saw all four cars from the team finish no higher than P23 within the thirty-two strong entry.
Again fielding a fourth car across the three available classes, it was the new #21 Gold Cup crew of David Pittard and Matisse Lismont car who headed the AMR quartet over the #7 Pro car of Matteo Drudi and Nicolas Baert, #11 Gold Cup runners James Jakes and newcomer Razvan Umbrarescu brought up the rear with revised driver line up of #12 Silver cup entry of Dante Rappange and Lorens Lecertua.
Despite the newly imposed loss of car weight and additional boost, none of the Aston’s were able to correct the expected qualifying position within the opening half of the race despite the likes of Pittard starting the #21 car and race one quickly descended into one that Comtoyou Racing will forget as the #7 Pro car eventually finished P17 overall and the #21 car P21 overall, P5 in Gold Cup.
Sunday saw the Vantage GT3 offered further weight loss and performance enhancement ahead of Q2 and that saw the #7 Pro climb the timing screen to claim sixth overall on the grid although both gold cars were still down at the wrong end of the table (no higher than P21) and with the #12 car setting no time at all.
With track temperatures remaining high, it was a better opening half race experience for the #7 car as Drudi quickly made the most of the errors of others to move up to P4 by the time the pit window opened.
Umbrarescu’s return to the series would however be a short-lived affair in race 2 as a spin into turn one just before the pit window put the #12 cars endeavours at an end as he brought out a FCY.
Service over and Baert’s retained the #7 P4 position whilst Pittard was now aboard the #21 car and had moved up to P15 overall – third in class although that would soon change as the rear window popped out of place after contact from the Audi behind into T1, hindering the cars aero-dynamics and forcing the AMR factory driver to eventually pit.
By the end, the #7 Pro car eventually finished P6 overall after a five second post race time penalty was applied for track limits - a more representative pace that what race 1 would have suggested despite Baert being hounded all the way around. The #12 silver cup car did not recover from their Q2 issues to finish at the rear and with both the #21 and #11 cars being non finishers. Certainly room for thought within each car ahead of the next round at Magny Cours at the tail end of August.
Next stop for the Comtoyou Racing team however is just next weekend as Endurance Cup series resumes from the Nurburgring.
Photo credits – Team / Series / social media
