Six years in the making, a massive and knowledgeable crowd attended the return of the ACO rules series back to the Northamptonshire circuit as the capacity grid of forty-four LMP2, LMP3 and LMGT3 machinery prepared themselves for what was already prepared to be a weather affected race.
The #59 Racing Spirit of Leman Aston Martin Racing Vantage of Clement Mateu, Erwan Bastard and Valentin Hasse-Clot had the ‘luxury’ of a very slender points lead coming into this race thanks to their class win last time out at Spa Francorchamps but a class wide balance of performance tweak by the series plus their own success ballast (from Spa) would place a whole new characteristic upon their car within their thirteen strong entry.
Early sessions went well for the #59 crew as they cycled through their Free Practice 1, Bronze driver test and Free Practice 2 sessions before moving into their class qualifying session for which Mateu would again be the sole participant. Despite his best of efforts, his time of 2:13:712 was only good enough for P4 in class which much consternation placed towards the front nearside wheel of the car after the session.
Sunday’s race start had already been moved forward an hour in the hope of missing (at least some) of the forecasted heavy rainfall but the race didn’t exactly get off to the best of starts (literally) as issues for a number of prototype cars on the opening laps forced it into a Full Course Yellow situation.
An early gain for Mateu before that had seen him move up to third as the race then entered nearly fifteen minutes of caution before eventually going back to green but before anyone could become too settled, one of the LMGT3 runners was knocked into a spin coming onto the National Pit Straight that saw the Mercedes hit hard into the crash barrier – Safety Car.
Fortunately, that driver appeared none the worse, but the resulting barrier damage did force what became the first of three red flags within the race. Getting back to green also saw the time lost during those repairs added back to the race clock at the end but even before Mateu could do too much about anything, the second red flag situation accord when three prototypes collected each other along the Hanger Straight.
Almost halfway through the original time before the race went back again to green after another Safety Car restart saw Mateu end his double stint still in third, to hand over to Bastard who would re-emerge in seventh.
Halfway through his stint and a half, however, saw the first signs of rain falling upon the Grand Prix circuit of Silverstone – something that would slowly but steadily intensify as the race clock continued to run, forcing all to eventually turn to full wet tyres.
Bastard’s stint would take the #59 car into the final hour of this four-hour race before AMR factory driver Hasse-Clot could get his first LMGT3 racing laps at the circuit at the end of his driver coaching duties beforehand.
With track conditions well against them, and without taking too much risk for the car on track, the #59 crew had to settle for a (disappointing for them) P6 finish in class that still earned them valuable championship points before the series heads to Portugal next month. The class results from Silverstone sees the #59 crew drop down to second, twelve points behind the new #50 Ferrari powered crew going into next month’s season decider.
That race will obviously be more than interesting to watch!