The midweek heatwave in the UK hasn’t persisted into the weekend, so sunny but quite chilly conditions prevailed through both of this morning’s Blancpain GT Endurance sessions, the one-hour Bronze Test and 90-minute Free Practice.
BMW Team Italia’s young Dutch recruit Max Koebolt went fastest in the Bronze Test, clocking a 2:01.599 in the #15 M6 GT3 (above). We caught up with him later during free practice to ask about his offseason move from WRT Audi to Roberto Ravaglia’s squad, back in Blancpain this year after stepping back to Italian GT in 2015.
“Peter Kox is advising me with my career in GTs, and he knows Roberto from their time driving together for McLaren,” explained Koebolt. “So he knew the BMW Italia would be coming back to Blancpain this year and the possibility of me driving for them came up over the winter. The M6 is a completely different car to the R8, front-engined and turbocharged, but I think it suits my driving style better, although I only have experience with the previous-generation R8 LMS Ultra, not the latest model.
Koebolt appeared on the GT scene last year, having graduated straight from karting “I went straight from into GTs, I saw no point wasting time and money in single-seaters,” he says matter-of-factly. “I had no interest in F1: my goals are to be a factory driver and do the Le Mans 24 Hours. You see drivers doing time in single-seaters and then they come to GTs anyway. The budget for F3 Euroseries is a million euro these days, you could do four seasons of GT3 for that, getting more races and more time in the car each year.”
Kessel Ferrari’s Michal Broniszewski and Oman Aston Martin’s Devon Modell were second and third-fastest respectively in the Bronze Test. The later Free Practice session, open to the entire field, saw the #53 AF Corse Ferrari go quickest courtesy of the efforts of Giancarlo Fisichella (above), but most of the other quick runners were in Audis and Lamborghinis, including Franck Perera in the #74 ISR R8 and Phil Keen in the #78 Barwell Huracan.
Silver-graded Keen (above) is aboard the #78 this weekend after regular driver Marco Attard elected to step down, feeling that running two bronze-graded drivers and one professional in the Pro-Am class is no longer competitive. “I don’t like it at all, and I don’t think it’s sustainable for the class when teams have to run these ‘super silvers’ to be in with any chance,” Barwell team boss Mark Lemmer told us. “The plan is for Phil to be in for Paul Ricard and Nurburgring, too, with Marco joining again for the Spa 24, where the driver gradings don’t have such a big effect over the race distance.”
Elsewhere in the paddock ROWE BMW’s Phillip Eng was in buoyant mood having just finalised his Le Mans 24 debut next month with Proton Porsche. “It’s not something I’ve been talking about for a long time, it was very last-minute,” the Austrian told us. “In fact, I think I sent my passport and license in just hours ahead of the deadline! I wasn’t expecting this, so I’ll have some work to do on the simulator now, both with the team and the mandatory session with the ACO in Paris, as the track is definitely very demanding. Obviously I’m delighted to be doing my first Le Mans and I’m very happy BMW gave me clearance to do it.”
They say you need three visits to really get a handle on Le Mans, but Eng is confident he has the team and team-mates in Richard Lietz and Michael Christensen to hit the ground running in year one. “As a driver and a sportsman you are always pushing for a good result,” he said “but sometimes it’s easier said than done, especially with the level of competition we’re seeing in GTE Pro this season. But we’ll make sure we have a good clean race and see where we are.”
Before that, though, Eng and his ROWE team-mates have Sunday’s three-hour race to focus on and the German outfit is looking to a good result after struggling with a mixture of reliability and bad luck in the first few Blancpain GT events of the season. “We’ve had a couple of difficult races, yes, but we’re learning with every outing.” he reckons. “The M6 is pretty much the youngest GT3 out there, so both the team and BMW as a manufacturer are still learning things. Things definitely didn’t go our way at Brands Hatch, but it was partially bad luck. Yes the speed was there, but if you don’t get the results, no-one cares!”
Someone else learning with every outing is Matt Simmons, one of the two new-for-2016 GT Academy winners at RJN Nissan. The upbeat Aussie was looking forward to racing once again on a track that becomes very familiar to graduates of the gamer-to-racer programme. “I’m more comfortable now that I’ve got a full race sequence under my belt, it feels like a weight off my shoulders,” he told us. “We’re learning plenty about working with the engineers as well, although it’s a bit of a Catch 22, as if you get sucked into data and telemetry too much you can end up overthinking things on track. But it’s a nice feeling to be able to give useful feedback and work together to improve the car.”
Next up in the schedule for Simmons and Romain Sarazin are the six and 24-hour races at Paul Ricard and Spa, and DSC points out to him that many drivers spend years contesting 15 and 20-minute sprints in single-seaters before tackling anything of that magnitude, whereas they’re getting to do it in their first ever year of competition. “It does make you realise how big the opportunity we’ve been given is,” he says. “It means stepping up our training again to deal with both the heat of Paul Ricard and the stamina needed for Spa, so it’s another level of our development.”
Support and welcome from established ‘Nismo Athletes’ like Alex Buncombe is a given, of course, but how is a fresh-faced GT Academy winner like Simmons welcomed elsewhere in the paddock? “I’ve had a few chats and introduced myself to some other drivers,” he says. “We still have plenty to prove, of course, but with GT Academy being around for a good few years now, they know what to expect with us and know we have the potential to be good. Reip going to Bentley is the perfect example of that.”
In the Team Parker Racing Bentley garage, motoring journo and soon-to-be Top Gear presenter Chris Harris (above)was relishing his second weekend of Blancpain Endurance, having been denied the chance to race last time out in Monza following early contact for the #30 Continental GT3.
“I’m loving it, it’s like that scene in Back To The Future where Marty says to Doc ‘you made a time machine out of DeLorean?’ except here it’s ‘you made a race car out of a Bentley?’ they took a ton of weight out of it, it’s incredible,” he enthused. “A lot of the racing I’ve done has been one-offs, sampling the car, so with a full season there are no excuses now when I have to get back in and do it again in a few weeks! Monza was just mental, like a massive go-kart race with your mates, but we should go well here at Silverstone as we’ve plenty of grunt on the long straights, even if we struggle a bit with low-speed traction.
“The Balance of Performance is well done this year I think, you can feel where your strengths and weaknesses are versus the other cars, so you can play a bit of a chess game. There’s lots of old-school endurance strategy here, too: people sandbagging, taking tyres out at the last minute and so on… I love it, that’s how it should be!”
So will Blancpain GT be making an appearance on Top Gear? Harris isn’t sure just yet and it’s partly out of his hands “Things can get complicated with the BBC commercial department,” he admits. “But I’m also working with BBC Worldwide in the States to produce a Chris Harris On Cars-style YouTube channel, so we’re talking to SRO about filming for that at the Spa 24 hours.”
Harris’ view on the BoP was backed up by Rinaldi Ferrari’s Marco Seefried (above), who was full of praise for what SRO technical guru Claude Surmont has achieved this season. “It’s really good right now, the best of any series I race in,” said the German, just out of the car during Free Practice. “Other GT3 series like ADAC GT Masters really struggle with it, they seem to be a step or two behind what Blancpain is doing. I have a lot of respect for what Claude has been able to do this year, all the cars are within a couple of tenths and you really feel it’s you the driver that’s making the difference.”
As reported this morning, Carrera Cup ace Dan Cammish got a late call-up to make his GT3 debut in the Konrad Motorsport Lamborghini (above), having turned out for the squad in Carrera Cup Germany last season. “My engineer in the UK is running Konrad’s Lamborghinis and I got to know Franz himself through Nick Tandy last year,” Cammish said before getting in the car for the first time in Free Practice. “It’ll brake later and accelerate quicker, so that’s another three seconds or so a lap or so right there, I just need to figure out the aero bit in the middle! This is a one-off for now, but it’s the kind of opportunity I have to take, as I don’t have the money to buy myself into a championship like this. Hopefully if the weekend goes well I’ll be towards the top of list if he needs someone again.
Over at WRT Audi, ex-Team BMW Brasil man Sergio Jimenez was keeping an eye on protege Rodrigo Baptista (above), who, along with Audi works driver Filipe Albuquerque makes up an all-Portuguese-speaking driver line-up in the #3 car. Jimenez said he was talking to WRT even before the proposed Team Brasil Lamborghini Huracan effort failed to come to fruition for 2016 due to sponsorship and exchange-rate difficulties.
“I missed Misano because of a Brazilian Stock Cars clash, so we started in Monza,” Jimenez told us. “It’s all good so far, the car feels more stable than the Z4 did, the team are very professional and I’ve been received well here. I was already supporting and coaching Rodrigo back in Brazil, where he was doing F3, but I recommended he come to sportscars, as there are so many opportunities for a good professional career here, whether it’s GTs, DTM or LMPs. He’s also taller and heavier than would be ideal for single-seaters these days, so it’s the right path. This will be a very tough year for him, as he knows none of the tracks, but the plan is to keep learning and stay here for two to three seasons.
