Challenges for Racing Spirit of Leman crew in second round of GT4 Winter Series

Sunday, January 26, 2025

 


It was another ‘character-building’ exercise for the #39 Racing Spirit of Leman Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 crew of Baudouin Detout and Max Hewitt at their latest round of the GT4 Winter Series from Portimao this weekend.

Not only did pre-event testing prove itself to be decidedly wet but repeated turbo issues with their number one chassis forced the pairing to swap over to their spare chassis in the absence of any onsite AMR support.


Eventually getting down to racing business on what became a dry track on Saturday afternoon, a great start from Detout in his opening thirty-minute sprint race saw his great start from sixth up to third on the opening lap rudely snuffed out by the unwanted attention of following Mercedes powered team that spun the Aston Martin around and dropped him down to eleventh.

Whilst Detout did recover to a P9 overall finish (P6 within their allotted Pro class), the literal damage to both car and race position had already been done.


Next out on Sunday morning, it was Hewitt’s turn for his own thirty-minute sprint race but this time the Algarve weather was threatening to close in again as the young American made it to the grid for his P7 overall starting position. Despite ominous looking clouds circulating above, race two at least stayed dry as the #39 car come home eighth overall and P4 in Pro.

The weekends final race however wasn’t so fortunate as the rain was already falling as the remaining twelve cars from the original eighteen car grid assembled for the hour-long pit stop race. With Hewitt taking the start, the #39 would run as high as P6 overall before their mandatory stop so Detout had the misfortune of completing the race under deteriorating track conditions to ultimately finish P10 overall/P5 in class.


Whilst the Gedlich ran Winter Series now has a six-hour race in Portimao next weekend, the next round of the GT4 Winter Series will be from Valencia in three weeks’ time.

Photo credits – Daniel Burgin
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