Lamborghini factory driver Mirko Bortolotti in the #16 Grasser Racing car (above) went fastest in Saturday evening’s pre-qualifying session for Sunday’s three-hour Blancpain GT Endurance Cup race at Silverstone. Going around in 1:59.873 early in the session, the Italian was one of just two drivers to break the two-minute barrier over the 90 minutes. The session was red-flagged for some time with 25 minutes to go after a heavy impact for Nicholas Armindo in the Attempto Racing Porsche (below).
The bizarre incident saw the Frenchman move across on the #8 Bentley (being driven by Andy Soucek at the time) on the F1 pit straight, tagging the front left of the British car and sending himself into a slide that ended in a big front-end impact with the wall. Armindo was unhurt, but the smash left the #77 911 looking doubtful for the race. Soucek’s co-driver Maxime Soulet reported: “Over the radio, Andy just said what we saw on TV, the Porsche just moved across on him.” Damage to the Bentley was fairly minimal and the session restarted with about 10 minutes to go.
Second-fastest was another Lamborghini, the #78 Barwell Motorsport entry (above), which clocked a 1:59.593 in the hands of Bortolotti’s fellow factory driver Marco Mapelli. Brands Hatch Sprint Cup polesitter Franck Perera completed the top three in the #74 ISR Audi, with a time of 2:00.011. Next up were the #56 Black Falcon Mercedes, the #8 works Bentley and the #34 Scuderia Praha Ferrari and the #99 ROWE BMW, making it six different manufacturers in the top seven.
DSC made use of the red-flag downtime to catch up with WRT Audi’s Corvette ‘exchange student’ Antonio Garcia, who’s sharing the #28 R8 with ex-Manor F1 man Will Stevens and DTM young gun Nico Mueller at this round. “It’s nice, but different,” said the three-time Le Mans class winner of the R8 GT3. “I did some Le Mans testing between Monza and this race, so I’ve had to re-calibrate again to ABS and traction control, it takes a while! But it’s always good to be in a car, it keeps you sharp and keeps your confidence up regardless of how different it is.”
After this weekend, it’s all about Le Mans preparation for the experienced Spaniard, and he’s giving plenty of thought to the challenge Corvette’s US rival Ford will pose at La Sarthe. “We’ll see, we don’t know exactly how they’re playing it in WEC yet,” he said. “At the Laguna Seca IMSA race they beat us on fuel mileage, but it was only a lap, so that may not come into play around the longer lap at Le Mans.”
We also spoke to Richard Abra, back racing again this year with Joe Osborne and Mark Poole in a Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini (above) after Poole’s MP Motorsport effort took a year off in 2015, having run an Aston Martin in 2014. As we noted earlier, the other Barwell-run car has tweaked its driver line-up heading into this round, swapping silver-graded Phil Keen in for bronze-graded Marco Attard to move into line with what’s being seen in the rest of the class.
Abra, a silver himself, believes the issue is not with the driver grades as they stand, just with their implemenation. “Even looking within our team, I run a business during the week and this is the only championship I do. Whereas Marco [Mapelli] in the other car is both a Lamborghini and Audi factory driver and an official Pirelli tyre tester, and does lots of championships, so clearly we’re not in the same league, yet we’re both silver.”
Qualifying for the three-hour race takes place Sunday morning from 9am to 10am, with the race going green at 3pm.
