GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup kicks off this weekend from Paul Ricard with six Aston Martins (UPDATED)

 

 

The two-day Prologue Test ahead of the start to the SRO GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup has concluded today with nearly sixty highly competitive GT3 powered crews getting in some early laps around the Paul Ricard circuit in southern France ahead of the opening round to the season there this weekend,

Amongst that lot were seven Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 powered crews from the Comtoyou Racing, Walkenhorst Motorsport and Ecurie Ecosse by Blackthorn AMR teams who will individually compete across all classes except for the gold class this season.

 

It would have been good to say that the two-day, two session per day test passed off without incident for any of these Aston Martins but unfortunately, we were made aware of on track incidents for both Jamie Day and his #34 Walkenhorst Pro entry that he shares this year with Henrique Chaves and Christian Krognes as well as the #18 Comtoyou Racing Pro class entry of Mari Boya that he shares with Lance Stroll and Roberto Mehri.

Whilst Day was transferred to the circuit medical centre for checks, we understand that both he and Boya were otherwise uninjured from their experience whilst we still hunt down information about their respective cars.

 

Unsurprisingly, none of the AMR powered teams decided to ‘show off’ at the test, keeping their powder dry as it were for the real racing this weekend with the #007 Comtoyou Racing Pro class entry of Nicki Thiim, Marco Sorensen and Mattia Drudi being the fastest AMR crew in both sessions on day 1 – at best P11 overall.

Today saw two further sessions where it was the #56 Ecurie Ecosse by Blackthorn AMR Bronze classed entry of Giacomo Petrobelli, Jonny Adam and Tom Wood who lead the AMR charge with a lap time comparative to that of the #007 car the day before.

 

Beyond that, the remaining crews remained as previously confirmed with Kobe Pauwels/Oliver Soderstrom/Sebastian Baud aboard the #21 Comtoyou Racing Silver entry, Kyle Marcelli/AJ Muss/Marcelo Tomasoni aboard the #11 Comtoyou Racing Bronze entry as well as the #35 Walkenhorst Silver entry for their drivers Mateo Vilagomez/Ethan Ischer/Gaspard Simon.

Tomorrow (Friday) sees just a bronze driver test session for those applicable crews before one final Free Practice session for all into the night ahead of Qualifying over lunch on Saturday.

 

The opening six-hour race to the season will then roll off the grid at 18:00hrs local.

UPDATE

A social media post from Jamie Day has seen him apologise to his team and co-drivers for costing them the opening race this weekend as a consequence to his earlier accident. From that, we have to take it that the damage was too severe to repair with no spare chassis being available/allowed?

Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media