Not the best of starts for either AMR powered team at the start of the Jeddah GT World Challenge Europe finale
Friday, November 29, 2024
Before anyone else worries too much, none of the incidents involved have involved the championship contending #007 Comtoyou Racing car of Marco Sorensen, Nicki Thiim and Mateo Drudi but both the Comtoyou Racing and Walkenhorst Motorsport teams have already a car between them due to accident damage and a further car being sidelined due to a fire.
The #36 Walkenhorst bronze entry of Ben Green, Mex Jensen and David Pun was the first eliminated after the Chinese gentleman driver went off during the bronze driver test and that was already after the #11 Comtoyou Racing bronze entry of James Jakes, Nield Koolen and John De Wilde had been withdrawn without a wheel even being turned.
That lead to both Jakes and Koolen moving across to the sister #21 car at the expense of both regular drivers Charles Clarke and Matisse Lismont but even that arrangement was short-lived as that car crashed out but was fortunately repairable during testing
If that could not have gone any worse for the Aston Martin Racing collective, then the silver #35 Walkenhorst car was to suffer a fuel fire aboard the car – although quickly extinguished, the subsequent damage and cleaning up meant that the Romain Le Roux, Maxime Robin and Lorcan Hanafin entry would have little track time through Thursday and Friday with Q1-Q2-Q3 sessions their first real possibilities.
Assuming that all goes well overnight with the repairs of that car, that has left the original driver line ups of some cars being rehashed again as the sessions went through Free Practice and into the last session of today in Pre-Qualifying.
Both the #007 and #34 Pro entries remain the same with the Comtoyou Racing entries of the #21 car now being that of Koolen, Jakes and Job Van Uitert and the #12 being Nicolas Baert, Sebastian Ogaard and Matisse Lismont alongside a hopefully repairable #35 Walkenhorst.
And that doesn’t even include anything about track performances today from any of the AMR powered cars that are left!!
Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media
