French based Mirage Racing were the first to confirm their quartet of drivers as Ruben Del Sarte returns to both team and series, this time alongside Roberto Faria within the silver class as well as Pro-Am pairing Stanislav Safronov and Alexandr Vaintrub returning to what they know best from last year too.

Those two AMR Vantage GT4 Evo entries will now be complemented by a similar pair from the Swiss based Racing Spirit of Leman team who now return with two silver class entries for both Baudouin Detout, Clement Seyler and David Kullmann and Will Orton.

Whilst both Detout and Kullmann are team/series returnee’s, Orton makes the natural progressive step up from the British GT Championship where he drove the Forsetti Motorsport AMR Vantage GT4 alongside Marc Warren to narrowly miss out upon the class title at the end.

Seyler, we remember from his early GT4 European Series days within the Street Art Racing Vantage GT4 where he and Pascal Bachmann secured the Am class title. Since then, the Luxembourger has competed within both GT4 and GT3 series within the SRO Europe family.

Going into this opening two race weekend, the likes of Faria, Detout and Kellmann come race ready having already participated within the Iberian Supercars Series, GT4 Winter Series and Ultimate GT Series respectively over the previous couple of months.

The forty-three strong entry will hit the Le Castellet track for the first time tomorrow with private testing before Free Practice on Friday, Pre-Qualifying and Qualifying on Saturday before two, one-hour races on Sunday.

Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media

Having already had up to seven brand new AMR Vantage GT3’s taking part within the Endurance part of the GT World Challenge Europe Series next weekend, another fifty strong GT4 field from over ten manufactures will again do battle together over the course of their two one-hour races per event for their six round 2024 campaign.

Whilst some of the seven Aston Martin powered entries have already been confirmed to us over the winter months, two further entries still require the finer detail of a second driver to be confirmed as both Mateo Villagomez (aboard his #82 Racing Spirit of Leman) and Baudouin Detout (aboard his #39 GPA Racing) cars still have that ominous TBA against their entries.

When has been revealed is the number of new 2024 evolutionary models of the Vantage GT4 that are due to take part within the series from the off with four of the seven AMR’s being listed as ‘Evo’s’.

Ruben Del Sarte and Josh Miller head the AMR runners in today’s provisional entry list with their 2019 based #5 Mirage Racing silver entry but their sister #7 Pro-Am entry of Stanislav Safronov and Aleksandr Vaintrub will be (apparently) running in the new 2024 version.

Both Racing Spirit of Leman entries – the #82 car of Mateo Villagomez (plus one) and the #74 silver entry for Alexandre Machado and Kevin Kullmann are also listed as being ‘evo’ versions. We know that the team did have one such car for their sponsor reveal evening last week and we see that another may have been dispatched to them only last night in time for their other commitments within the parallel FFSA GT4 Series this weekend.

Former FFSA GT4 Am Champions Florent Grizaud and Kevin Jimenez are both back with GPA Racing with their 2019 machine, again in the Am class aboard their #72 entry which they hope to swap out to a 2024 40A version later in the season. They also have Baudouin Detout waiting in the wings for a co-driver within his #39 GPA Racing entry – something which the entry lists also refers to as an Evo! We know that he and the team have been out testing over the previous weeks with various hopefuls alongside but nothing yet has been confirmed.

That leaves the two entries from the German based Prosport Racing team to finalise the AMR seven as Hugo Sasse pairs up this year with Raphael Rennhofer and Henrik Still competes alongside Fabio Rauer in their #99 and #100 silver entries respectively.

Photo credits – teams / social media / Daniel Buergen

Having endured some rotten luck and misfortune in recent rounds, Saturday’s Qualifying went especially well for the Spirit of Leman team after its #92 silver ranked crew of Mateo Villagomez/Victor Weyrich earned themselves pole position for race 1 whilst their #74 Am class crew of Clement Dub/Ronald Basso earned themselves a P2 start in class respectively.

Whilst the #74 unfortunately listed a DNF in race 1, alongside that of the #6 Mirage of Yves Lemaitre/Vincent Beltoise, the #92 car came home in third overall with the #5 Mirage crew of David Kullmann/Ruben Del Sarte not far off either in P5.

The #39 GPA Racing car of Baudouin Detout/Tom Verdier also suffered a late race incident which although left them still classified as a finish, left them with irreparable damage in time for Sundays second for the second time this season so far!

In Q2, the #92 car also gained class pole (albeit P3 overall) as did their sister #74 car in Am.

This time around, there was no mistakes from the Racing Spirit of Leman guys who brought their cars home to earn themselves a P2 in Silver and a class win in Am. The #5 Mirage would again enter a repeat of their bets result of the season so far with another P5 in class whilst the AGS Events team completed both races with both cars (for the first time) within their Pro-Am and Am classes.

These results still leave the #74 RSLM crew in second within the Am Class after the leaders again outscored them this weekend as the series looks ahead to the Val de Vienne Festival in early July.

Photo credits – FFSA

There was then the omission from the grid of the sister #89 AGS Events Racing AMR of team boss Nicolas Gomar and Hugo Bac after they suffered a unexpected failure of a hydraulic component on the way out to the grid.

Like the series sister series in the UK today, umbrellas were also needed at the Nogaro circuit but not to keep off the rain – rather than as a shield against the prevailing winds and bright warm spring sunshine.

Unfortunately for the remaining Aston Martin runners, that sunshine didn’t last too long for two more runners either as a three-car coming together on the opening lap saw the #63 Alpine come across the bow of the #72 GPA Racing car of Kevin Jimenez and the #73 Racing Spirit of Lemans car of Clement Dub causing damage to all three cars. Jimenez would be forced to pit with a puncture but would re-join albeit a lap down whilst the #74 would persevere into the next problem!

A good start however from the #7 Mirage Racing AMR of Louis Meric after the team had worked late overnight repairing the damage from their race one incident but he would hang onto P7 throughout the opening laps despite having dropped down from his P4 Qualifying position of yesterday.

Fifteen minutes in and the #74 Racing Spirit of Lemans car again gets some more rough treatment as the #888 Audi tags it into a spin when it was nowhere close to making the apex first but at least the #74 was again able to restart just ahead of the mandatory pit stop window opening.

A good job from Meric as he handed the #7 Mirage car over to Romain Carton in seventh whilst the sister #5 car of David Kullman had done a better job in race two to hand over to co-driver Ruben Del Sarte. It was then salt was really rubbed into the wounds of the Racing Spirit of Lemans team as the #92 car of Mateo Villagomez came to a sudden halt on track whilst tenth to end up ‘dead stick’ with nowhere to go.

Whilst Race Control waited for all to complete their pit stop cycle, the inevitable Safety Car was called to recover the #92 to a place of safety. Getting back to green with just fifteen minutes of the race remaining, it was to be a clear sprint to the finish but from the eights Aston Martins originally listed, it was only the #7 Mirage car of Carton who would be anywhere close to challenge, but he was still in a distant eighth.

To conclude what was a miserable race for the four AMR powered teams, the #7 Mirage car of Carton and Meric came home P8 overall – P6 in class with its sister #5 car of Del Sarte and Kullman P16 overall / P9 in class with the #74 and #72 Racing Spirit of Lemans and GPA Racing cars finishing at the tail end of the timing screen.

Next stop for this series will be at Magny- Cours at the beginning of May.

Photo credits – FFSA GT4