Whilst one Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 powered team continued with their fine form from last time out, the other stabilised their performances to come home with some more silverware of their at the end of last weekend’s GT World Challenge Europe Spring Cup event from Magny-Cours.
The Walkenhorst Motorsport AMR team, and particularly their #34 silver class entered Vantage of Jamie Day and Mateo Villagomez, had enjoyed some well-deserved success last time out in the series from Misano just two weeks ago and this time round in France would see that continue – at least for the first race.
Having endured some torrential rain during some opening sessions, the first race of the weekend was an into the night race around at least a now dry former home to the French Grand Prix, the #21 silver classed entry from the Comtoyou Racing team had struck early gold by claiming pole position within their class for drivers Oliver Soderstrom and Arthur Dorison. The #7 Comtoyou Racing Pro classed entry of Nicki Thiim and Kobe Pauwels had also bounced back from a torrid round in Italy to claim sixth overall in qualifying.
Whilst that pole position didn’t turn into a podium finish for the #21 crew (as they finished 5th in class), it did for both the #7 and #34 crews as both crews took third in class at the end.
Sunday was another day and another qualifying session where this time, the #7 car inherited overall pole position after the faster BMW powered crew were penalised with their sister #21 car also going great guns again, claiming a P2 start to this race.
Whatever happened during the heat of the day, both Walkenhorst AMR entries this time struggled for pace in both qualifying and the race to end their weekend no higher than seventh in class for Day/Villagomez and P8 for the #35 Maxime Robin Gaspard Simon entry.
During the race, however, Lady Luck finally evaded the #7 crew as they fell back down to P11 at the finish whilst the #21 crew finally earned their first podium finish of the season after their P3 finish.
For the bronze classed #11 Comtoyou Racing AMR of Felice Jelmini and Marcelo Tomasoni, there was at least some improvement for this crew compared to what was tehir first round of the Sprint Cup season last time out in Misano, but they did still finish at the back of the pack at the end of each race.
The Sprint series runners now get a bit of a break after near back-to-back rounds as the Endurance Cup round from the Nurburgring is next up for the teams – the next round of Sprint will be from Zandvoort in about six weeks’ time.
Photo credits – Teams / Series
