Easter weekend was an important but successful one for racing driver, James Walker, as he took part in the British GT Championship at Oulton Park. Despite the fact James’ team only had two weeks to get to grips with their new car, the Mercedes SLS GT3, testing went well and the team felt fairly confident it would be a good race.

The British GT sees both professional and amateur drivers paired together (PRO/AM); James was paired with amateur and historic race winning driver, Jason Minshaw. During testing, they quickly discovered that getting the car to suit the Avon tyres the Championship uses was going to be the main goal. With only two, 1 hour sessions for both drivers to get up to speed meant it was going to be quite a challenge.

The qualifying round saw James put the car half way up the grid in 14th place; half a second quicker than he was able to go during the testing stages and 0.8 seconds quicker than the other Fortec Mercedes.

Race one, which has to be started by all the amateur drivers, only lasted as far as turn one as Jason was hit by two other cars. With the cars right rear corner heavily damaged the team were up against the clock to get the car repaired in the three hours they had between races. They did a fantastic job and the Fortec car was back on the grid for race two.

After a hard fight with one of the United Autosport Mclaren’s at the start of the race, James managed to chase down one of the AF Corse Ferrari 458 GT3. With the races only an hour in length it was soon time to hand the car back over to Jason Minshaw.

With a final race result of 6th place James was happy with how the weekend went;

“The chance to drive the stunning Mercedes SLS came at the very last minute and I’m really happy that I managed to put a deal together to return to Fortec Motorsport. It was their first race in GT’s so we had to get our heads down and work on getting everything up to speed. Finishing in 6th in what is one of, if not the most competitive GT Championship anywhere in the world, is a great start to the season for me. Also to be able to help Jason adapt to the car and see him progress as the weekend went on was a real plus point. We have been able to target some areas for the team to now work on as they head into the next race in a months’ time.”

James will shortly be announcing his plans for International outings this season. He is currently in discussions with teams for European Le Mans Series, ALMS, World Endurance Championship as well as racing in Asia.

Source : James Walker