Preparing to come out fighting at Spa

PREVIEW - British GT Round 7

A difficult race at Silverstone last month interrupted a strong run of podium finishes for the Beechdean AMR team’s British GT title fight. After a good look at what went wrong it’s now time to get the championship challenge back on track and what a place to do it!

The glorious Spa-Francorchamps Circuit hosts the only round of the 2018 British GT Championship to take place outside of the UK, which is a single, two-hour race this Sunday. The fast flowing seven-kilometre track is a driver favourite, due to its challenging configuration that includes the famous Eau Rouge/Raidillon combination and the daunting Blanchimont.

“Spa is not a circuit for the faint-hearted,” said team boss and driver of the #99 Aston Martin V12 Vantage GTE, Andrew Howard. “But that’s good as we’re not a faint-hearted team! I have many great memories of racing at Spa, which I have been doing since 2002 and have historically gone well there.”

Talking of the changes made to the Beechdean AMR team in the last few weeks, Howard said: “Since Silverstone we’ve taken a good look at everything that went wrong. We are constantly looking at improving things but this time we found ourselves having to find out why the car was so difficult to drive at a circuit we usually go well at. We’ve changed a few things and kept a few other things so this weekend we’ll find out if we made the right choices.

“We’ve also done some great work on the Base Performance simulator and our times in the sim reflected where we thought we should be as drivers so let’s get back on track at Spa and see if we did all the right things!”

Howard’s team mate, Aston Martin Racing works driver Darren Turner, is looking forward to working with a familiar face at Spa.

“It’s always good to go to Spa and I’m lucky this year as I’ve already raced there in the WEC season-opener,” said Turner. “It’s a great circuit to have on any calendar and it really adds something to the draw of the British GT Championship. We didn’t have the best of runs last time out at Silverstone so we’ve lost a bit of momentum in the championship. I’m pleased to see that we will be working with my race engineer from the WEC at Spa so let’s see if we can get back on that podium!”

SPA SCHEDULE

SATURDAY

09:00 – 10:00 Free Practice 1

11:30 – 12:30 Free Practice 2

14:05 – 14:15 Qualifying GT3 AM

14:20 – 14:30 Qualifying GT3 PRO

SUNDAY

09:50 – 10:00 Warm up

13:40 – 15:40 Race

LIVE TIMING: http://www.britishgt.com/live-timing