This season ProSpeed Competition, the reigning FIA GT3 champion, is defending its European title. For the Belgian Porsche team, the sole representative of the German manufacturer in this championship, the season kicked off with a fair amount of difficulty. At the wheel of the GrafiWrap & K-Rauta car, Jan Heylen and Petri Lappalainen came away from Portugal with two points for the team, a score definitively under all expectations.

The qualifying sessions mirrored what was to come over the weekend. Both in the gentlemen drivers as also the Pro drivers the two Belgian Porsche 911 GT3-R had to give in near on two seconds on the fastest cars, the same cars which during the Balance of Performance (BoP) tests had also been up front players. The image of the pre-season was even more magnified during the first confrontation of the season, a somewhat less than logic result of a championship which boasts a Balance of Performance philosophy.

With a twelfth and fourteenth time for vice-European FIA GT3 champion Paul van Splunteren and his brand new Belgian team mate Maxime Soulet, followed by a sixteenth and ninth place in the races for the Finn Petri Lappalainen and Jan Heylen, the season did not take off as hoped for ProSpeed Competition. The team now has a month before heading off for the following round in the prestigious FIA GT3 championship, to be held during the first weekend of June in Silverstone.

The sporting viewpoint: Rudi Penders (Team Manager)
“During the first race Paul van Splunteren and Maxime Soulet were penalised with a drive-through because apparently our pit stop was a fraction of a second too short, which is something bitter for us to swallow. In the second race Maxime was involved in a race- incident just after the start and he damaged the bottom of the NEC Porsche 911 GT3-R, whereby the car no longer handled perfectly. In ideal conditions they could have scored points, but in all honesty running with the front players was no longer possible for us. After this weekend the main lesson we have learned is that there’s still a great amount of work to be carried out when it comes to the BoP. The Porsche 911 GT3-R was the ideal norm in the pre-season, but there wasn’t much to be noticed of that here this weekend.”

Petri Lappalainen, team mate of Jan Heylen (Porsche 911 GT3-R #2)
“In these conditions the two points we scored are still a ray of hope, but we can’t really be truly happy about this. In fact Jan experienced the same problem as Maxime, as he also managed to damage the bottom of the Porsche on a curb stone after which the car became more difficult to handle. I fully agree with Rudi – Penders, ndlr – in the fact that at this moment the Balance of Performance needs to be reviewed.”

Maxime Soulet, team mate of Paul van Splunteren (Porsche 911 GT3-R #1)
“It was a difficult weekend, but we need to carry on working hard not forgetting that the season counts twelve races. Let’s not forget that last year the first race weekend was not brilliant and yet ProSpeed still managed to finish off the season as Champion.”

Source : ProSpeed Competition