Round 2 - Silverstone Race Report - May 2023
Silverstone 500
Well what can I say from being flooded by the great British weather, to Kavi being pushed off on the opening lap of the race, we and the Paddock sister car battled against pretty much everything the Silverstone 500 race weekend could throw at us.
This was a weekend that never quite settled down from Friday testing to the finish on Sunday. Having showed some solid pace on Friday testing, Saturday proved a near total washout , with qualifying eventually having to be abandoned due to rivers of rainwater running across the track and standing water making it too dangerous for the cars to run.
That meant the grid for Sundays race had to be set by combining each drivers fastest time from FP2 on Saturday, this was the first blow for us as we were bedding in brakes and trying out different trye pressures and doing some long run testing rather than outright speed. This meant our combined times put us P8 in the GT4 Pro-AM class but P16 overall in the GT4 class.
Regardless, this is a 3 hour race and we had the potential to push forward in the race. However Kavi made a good start and made up some places on the first couple of corners only to be hit in the side and pushed off the track by one of the Ford Mustangs as he tried to go through and overtake, this dropped us to dead last. A safety car was called out for another incident and we pitted which allowed me to jump in and take the seat, once the race got going again I struggled with getting the tyres to work but still managed to climb a couple of places before handing the car back to Kavi for his second stint and with new tyres Kavi managed to put in a great middle stint and bought the car back in to hand over to me in P4 in Pro-Am class, whilst doing the driver change over another safety car was call out and this then put us massively behind as it meant we now went a lap down. Once I got released from the pit and the race resumed I got my head down and put in some really excellent times fighting my way back through the order and was surprised when I got a stop go penalty for a short pit stop they said I was released 4/10ths of a second before I should have been. Even with this stop go penalty I managed to carry on putting in solid fast laps and managed to cross the finish line P5 in the Pro-am class and P9 overall in the GT4 class, hopefully we will get a bit of luck at the next round. We managed to get some solid points on the board and go again in 3 weeks time.
The next round is at one of my favourite tracks Donington Park on May 27/28.
With thanks to Jakob Ebrey Photography for the imagery.
