The Code Racing Development team made another monumental step up their Le Man Cup Series aspirations at the weekend after taking their Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 from the third row of the grid to secure a class win yesterday.
Racing at the Circuit Paul Ricard in the south of France for the second round of the ACO rules series saw the #11 car of Philipp Sager and Rory Van Der Steur augment their P2 finish at the opening round of the season from Barcelona top now lead the GT3 class as the series now prepares for its double header race weekend at the 24 Hours of Le Mans later in June.
Private testing at the circuit had seen the crew start from the very bottom of the timing screen earlier in the week to see them comfortably placed midtable by the end of the Free Practice sessions going into Qualifying before dropping back down to P6 by the end of that process.
With earlier rain showers having passed the circuit by, the two-hour race got underway under clearing blue skies and rapidly warming temperatures with the usually expected degree of contact between the rear of the LMP3 cars and the head of the GT3 entries with the Safety Car being called on the opening lap.
Dropping back to last overall by the time of the restart, that left a lot of work for Sager and Van Der Steur to do over the next one hour and fifty minutes. Further periods of caution saw the race again stagnated as further cars and debris were removed from the circuit with the #11 car making its way up to fourth by the time the GT’s then started to pit for fuel service and driver change.
A further Safety Car intervention for a small fire aboard another LMP3 car took further racing minutes off the clock with Van Der Steur loitering menacingly third in class with just over thirty minutes remaining. Having passed the #65 Mercedes, it was a straight chase after the #17 Kessell Ferrari for ultimate class honours and with less than twenty to go.
The job was eventually done with ten minutes remaining where just the top two in class were racing without any post-race time penalties looming at the chequered flag as the #11 Aston Martin eventually finished P26 overall and first in class for their efforts for the Code of Racing Development team to now lead the Teams and Drivers Championship by eight points as now Le Mans comes into mind.
Photo credits – Team / Series / social media