Photo Above: BritishGT.com
The past seven days have been busy for the sportscar community across Europe as the British GT Championship hosted its pre-season Media Day at Snetterton, the European Le Mans Series contenders met for the Official Test Session at Autodromo Nazionale Monza, the FIA World Endurance Championship prepared for the Prologue, also at Monza, and the 24H SERIES started arriving at Silverstone for the HANKOOK 24H SILVERSTONE.
In the British GT Championship, Nick Jones and Scott Parker announced that they will contest the 2017 Championship in their Team Parker Racing-run Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport.
The duo had intended to run the full 2016 season with the Porsche but delivery issues meant that they were unable to get the car out until the Silverstone round and even then without the full ‘MR’ kit necessary for their entry to be fully competitive.
“We’re coming at it from a totally different standpoint from 2016 which was a very tough season for a variety of reasons,” said Jones. “But after working closely with Team Parker and doing a lot of testing, I feel like we’ve taken some big steps forward.”
Read the full story on EnduranceandGT.co.uk here.
Staying with the British GT Championship, the Media Day at Snetterton, after a foggy start, enjoyed some glorious spring weather, enabling the cars to stretch their legs. The championship has undergone some evolutions during the winter, something that Championship Manager Benjamin Franassovici was keen to point out.
“We want keep the platform stable so we don’t need to change the format too much,” said Franassovici. “What is important is that we have live TV this year. Front Runner TV will be hosting our programme and we look forward to producing a great programme for this new channel.”
“We’ve increased track-time during free practice, targeted at the gentleman driver and the two-hour race format driving time has been increased from 60 to 70 minutes.”
The Championship Manager is also delighted at the entry list for the 2017 season.
“We’re again at capacity,” said Franassovici. “We’re very excited to see that GT3 is doing so well. It’s great to have new models joining British GT.”
Click here to read the full story on EnduranceandGT.co.uk.
Double British GT champion Jonny Adam spoke to the media about his thoughts on the new season.
“It’s going to be difficult” said Adam. “Last year wen had a great season with TF Sport and a new teammate last year with Derek (Johnston). It was a great season with great success but this year it will be really difficult. We won the championship last year, yes, but we didn’t have consistency in the middle part of the year so our focus is to have that throughout.”
Read more of Jonny Adam’s comments here.
The European Le Mans Series gathered at Autodromo Nazionale Monza for the Official Test. In LMP2 Graff was strong, topping the timesheets in three out of the five sessions. It was, however, the #28 IDEC SPORT RACING Ligier JSP2-17, driven by Patrice and Paul Lafargue, Olivier Pla and David Zollinger which put in the quickest time for the class over the five sessions.
2016 ELMS LMGTE Champions Beechdean AMR were highly competitive throughout the five sessions, heading the time-sheets in two. It was, however, the 2016 Michelin GT3 Le Mans Cup victors TF Sport who were fastest in class over the two days with Salih Yoluc setting a 1:48.720 in the first session.
You can read more from the European Le Mans Series Official test here.
This coming weekend will be busy with the FIA World Endurance Championship field taking over at Monza for the Prologue.
Also this weekend the 24H TCE SERIES HANKOOK 24H SILVERSTONE takes place at the Northamptonshire circuit. You can find the entry-list here. The flag drops at 4.00pm on April 1. Live timing can be found here.
Whatever and wherever you are watching, competing or marshalling at this weekend, have a great one!