The #7 Mirage of Louis Meric and Romain Carton were the front running silver class Aston in Silver whilst the #74 Racing Spirit of Leman car of Clement Dub and Ronald Basso were doing similar in their Am class.

Under the darkening skies of a Saturday afternoon start, race one got off to a faltering start as a three-car incident at turn one on the opening lap eliminated two cars including the #5 Mirage of David Kullmann where the clean-up operation lost a quarter of the available race time.

Going back to green, the #74 and #7 cars maintained that pace as the sister #6 Mirage car of Yves Lemaitre and Vincent Beltoise also fell by the wayside for an early DNF to allow the #7 Mirage car to claim a worthy P3 overall finish with the #74 picking up a second in Am.

With Qualifying for race 2 also happening on Saturday, the #74 would claim another front P3 start in Am whilst its sister #92 silver class car of Mateo Villagomez and Victor Weyrich claimed a front row start at the front in P2.

Going green in today’s race 2 saw an early wild ride through the gravel for the #89 AGS Events Racing Aston Martin of Higo Bac and Nicolas Gomar but this time they survived to race another lap as Villagomez pushed hard for the lead from the off.

The race was decided within the pit lane as the #92 RSLM and #17 BMW pitted at the same time for a drag race out which saw Weyrich being the quicker to react to assume the lead for the first time. Having lost out in race 1, the #5 Mirage car of Kullmann had a lucky escape with another gravel trap at the end of the lap after he was pushed wide and into the stones only to be narrowly avoided by the #89 AGS Events Aston as he re-joined the circuit.

A late Safety Car for another car in the gravel set up a final two lap dash to the flag for the #92 car but the RSLM team held their nerve as they came home for a double podium celebration with the #92 came home for a race win with the sister #74 also taking P3 in Am. It also saw the best result of the season so far for the AMR runners with this time only the #98 AGS Events Racing Am entry of Christophe Carriere and Didier Dumaine failing to finish.

The next round will be from Dijon in about five weeks’ time.

Photo credits – FFSA GT4

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