It’s been another busy weekend for the GT Academy drivers and the extended NISMO Athlete family, with pretty mixed results in the various disciplines.
Things got underway pretty well though at Silverstone. Despite the delay to Nissan’s World Endurance Championship entry with the radical Nissan GT-R LMP1, there was heavy presence from the brand in the European Le Mans Series support race. Olympic legend and NISMO Athlete Sir Chris Hoy and 2014 GT Academy winner Gaetan Paletou were making their prototype debuts in the all-new entry-level LMP3 class and following Friday’s qualifying they found themselves sitting first and second on the grid for the race.
While the LMP2 and GT cars were tripping over each other – to the point that even the final race classification is still under investigation after an awful penultimate lap – the white-and-red suited pair were able to close out a pretty clean race, with Chris taking the chequered flag himself for his first professional race win after Charlie Robertson had managed the opening stint. Gaetan and codriver Mike Simpson took 2nd place to bag the 1-2 for Team LNT – Nissan GT-R LM driver Harry Tinckell, moonlighting for JOTA Sport in LMP2 grabbed third in the top category too.
Things didn’t unfold so well at Monza however, as the RJN team looked to follow up on the excellent Bathurst 12hr earlier in the year – and temporarily banish the memories of the VLN race last month – with the start of the Blancpain Endurance Series season. The weekend started with a middling qualifying result – the grid’s top ten was swamped by Pro-Am Ferraris and even the Pro GT-R entry started only 12th overall and 4th in class, with the Pro-Am #22 car 21st on the 52 car grid.
While Pro-driver Florian Strauss – 2012 GT Academy Germany winner – immediately set about improving that position, he had to retire the car just over half an hour in with an oil pickup problem slowly cooking the engine. Wolfgang Reip in the #23 had none of the same problems and had charged up to 6th overall by the time he had to hand over the reins to Katsumasa Chiyo. The Japanese driver brought back memories of that Bathurst win as he tussled with the Bentley GT3 before passing control to Alex Buncombe in the final stint. With a podium on the cards, the GT-R’s race was halted by a mis-timed safety car which picked up the wrong cars and allowed the lead pack to race away – Alex eventually settling for 5th in class and 8th overall. However controversy is hovering over Monza too as the class and race winning Lamborghini Huracan is facing exclusion for refuelling irregularities and this may promote the team to 4th and 7th.
Kazunori Yamauchi has also been in racing action this weekend, taking part in the qualifying race for the Nürburgring 24hr later this year following the reinstatement of GT3 class cars. He’s been driving the familiar blue Schulze Motorsport Nissan GT-R, which is wearing the #21 for this season. Paired up with the Schulze brothers and Michael Krumm, the team finished the 6hr qualification race in 8th in the SP9 GT3 class, but 57th overall, after they had to retire the car just before the 5 hour mark.
See more articles on Blancpain Endurance Series and European Le Mans Series.
It’s good to hear team RJN is moving on after last month. Reading on… I musta been sleepin’?!
There’s a Huracane out there?!.. a 640?!.. V10?!!! and competing in GT3?!!! Where the heck have I been!? That Lamborghini Huracane is waaay sexier than it’s predicessor (sorry, turned auto spell off). That’s 3 must haves for GT now. McLaren, Ferrari and now Lamborghini, in RM guiese. I’ll certainly be saddened if Lamborghini’s Monza win is nullified. I like sexy hip toss underdogs ;)
Hopefully things work out better the next time.
Yeah, the safety car rule was stupid. They said that the SC didn’t have to pick up the leading group therefore Nissan was one of them that got done by the deployment of SC. It’s shame that Huracan won its debut race but they might see it taken away from them. It was interesting to see the CEO of Lambo was at the race to see its performance.