BRITISH GT PODIUM AT SPA FRANCORCHAMPS!

Qualifying

Olly Bryant shared a 2010 Porsche 997 GT3R with Oliver Morley in the 2.5 hour GT race at Spa Francorchamps. Olly had tested the car in March but Oliver Morley had not driven the car before. Practice was a 1 hour session with the idea of acclimatising Morley to the car, and for Bryant to get a setup on the car. Unfortunately, there was an electrical problem that kept causing the car to cut out so after several attempts to fix the car, the team found the cause, a faulty connection in one of the engine loom plugs. It was too late however, and the 2 drivers only managed 1 flying lap each at the end of the session.

They had to go straight into qualifying with only 1 lap behind them. The qualifying session was used to get Morley up to speed in the car. He went out first and drove for half an hour to get up to speed in the car. With just over 20 minutes to go, the car was pitted and Bryant got in to set a time.

Unfortunately, the set up on the car was not right and the car had terrible understeer, Olly managed a lap time of 2m29.283s which lined the car up 9th on the grid. This was disappointing, but the team soon found from looking through the data that the diff had been locking up in the corners, pushing the car on and causing the serious understeer and killing the lap time.

Race

As the cars lined up for the start of the race, the sun was shining over the Francorchamps circuit. Bryant was to take the start and Morley was to finish. Olly made a great start, gaining several positions over the opening laps, before settling into a rhythm to preserve the car throughout the stint. Just over an hour into the race, Olly pitted to take fresh tyres and fill up with fuel. On the worn tyres the car had developed nasty turn in oversteer which was hampering the car’s lap times. This was a handling characteristic that could not be fixed during the race and would have been eliminated with time to test in free practice and get a good setup on the car. Olly had to drive around this problem and he resumed his stint before a lengthy safety car period started as a car crashed at Eau Rouge and another stopped on the run to the bus stop chicane. The team took advantage of this to pit the car and hand over to Oliver Morley, who took over with 1 hour remaining. Morley did a great job after his limited running in the car and held off a strong challenge from the Aston Martin of Michael Bentwood to hold on to 3rd place and make it a Trackspeed 2-3 on the podium, with the sister car of team owner David Ashburn and experienced Porsche pilot Richard Westbrook claiming 2nd. The race was won by the Lamborghini Gallardo of Peter Kox and Marc Hayek, which recorded a fastest lap some 4 seconds faster than the Porsches best. Clearly some balance of performance needs to be carried out here.

This was a great result for the team, and the 2 Olly’s drove well together and are keen to race together again, if the opportunity arises.