Whilst there wasn’t any last-minute opportunity for any of the five Aston Martin Racing powered teams to secure a class championship with the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup finale at the weekend, there was still time for one last piece of silverware for their efforts.
Down at the Circuit de Catalunya near Barcelona for the final race weekend of the Sprint Cup Series saw the usual three crews from the Comtoyou Racing team as well as the two Walkenhorst Motorsport who had all had one of those seasons where period moments of magnificence and a podium gong along the way just wasn’t enough to put them into any of the four-class championship hunts this time around.
Racing purely for pride and next seasons possibilities had Kobe Pauwels and Nicki Thiim togther again one last time within their #007 Pro class car along with Oliver Soderstrom and Arthur Dorison aboard their #21 silver entry as well as both Felice Jelmini and Marcelo Tomasoni in their #11 Comtoyou Racing AMR Vantage GT3 bronze cup entry. They would again be joined by the two silver class entries for both Jamie Day and Matteo Villagomez and Gaspard Simin and Maxime Robin aboard their #34 and #35 cars respectively.
Getting Saturday’s qualifying in just before the monsoon that was to follow as the forty-four cars assembled upon the grid for the first of the two final one hour sprint races but despite the track conditions, everyone enjoyed a miraculously clean opening few laps.
Quickly the circuit became flooded in places and that saw a number of cars take a spin or two along the way, including the #11 Aston Martin as the Safety Car was finally called out for a two-car incident at turn 11 after fifteen minutes.
Whilst the race did get back going again, a later off for the #35 Walkenhorst car just before the completion of the obligatory driver change at the halfway point – together with the intensifying rainfall saw the race red flagged for safety before getting back going again after something like a twenty-minute delay.
At that restart, the #007 of Thiim was the highest placed Aston Martin and he quickly made good use of the compact running order as he progressed through from P21 to P13 as another Safety Car was called to recover the stricken #35 car after all. Going back to green from that one and with little over six minutes remaining, the #007 had an (unseen) moment on track that dropped them back down to P18 overall- still making them the highest placed AMR powered crew but with the #34 crew of Day and Villagomez just missing out on another class podium in fourth.
Sunday’s much delayed race would be effected of the remainder of Saturday’s race programme being carried over until Sunday morning instead, so their grid was set by the fastest time of each nominated driver from Free Practice 2 – such was the rush to get through the actual racing rather than running qualifying sessions.
This time under near clear blue skies and warming sunshine, the circuit was poles apart from the day before as the remaining class championship wins still needed to be determined. Another frenetic start again saw contact into turns 1 to 2 with another Safety Car being the result before going quickly back to green.
With light already fading, Thiim was running within the top ten again overall with Villagomez again running just off the silver podium in fourth as the cars made for pit lane for their final stops of the season. Just as the pit window closed, a brief FCY was shown to allow marshals to recover a stranded car off track at Turn 13 before leaving a twenty-minute dash to the flag.
The race and indeed the season finally ended with the #007 finishing as the best placed Aston in P7 overall / P5 in class, but the final gong went to the #34 Walkenhorst crew of Day and Villagomez as they went one better than yesterday to finish the year in Sprint P15 overall and P3 in class.
Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media
