The Mark Poole-owned Aston Martin Vantage GT3 was back in action at Silverstone GP circuit last weekend, just one week after notching up a hard-earned sixth place finish in the British GT race around the high-speed Northants venue. This time the competition went up another level, with British GT’s 48-car entry being surpassed by no less than 57 GT3 cars lining up for Europe’s most prestigious GT championship, the Blancpain Endurance Series (BES). Amongst this entry were 21 cars with all professional driver crews and a 23-strong field of Pro-Am class cars, which are allowed just one professional driver. Incredibly this race marked the first ever international series race of any kind that Mark and Richard Abra had competed in, but together with top British pro driver, Joe Osborne, they took on the very best in Europe in the Barwell Motorsport car and came away with a superb finish of 2nd in Pro-Am and 13th overall out of the monster entry.
The team and drivers were well prepared for the demands of Silverstone after the previous weekend’s encounter, and even managed to fit in a test at Snetterton last week to acclimatise themselves to the BES specification Pirelli tyres. This meant that we were able to hit the ground running as soon as the BES cars started to circulate the track on Saturday, and Mark signalled our intent by posting the 2nd fastest time in the opening hour test session for Bronze-level amateur drivers only. We followed this up by rocking the BES establishment in the morning’s Free Practice session, when a great lap by Richard Abra put the Barwell Aston at the very top of the timesheets overall! We then proved this wasn’t just a flash in the pan by claiming the fifth quickest lap in the official Pre-Qualifying session on Saturday afternoon. The Barwell engineers were working hard to get the MP Motorsport-backed Aston tuned in to the Pirelli rubber, and with all three drivers operating at a high level our confidence was extremely high for official qualifying and the race on Sunday.
Everything went according to plan during official qualifying, where we expected to be bumped down the order slightly by some of the top all-Pro cars that hadn’t fully shown their hands yet. Mark completed his mandatory three laps before handing over to Joe, whose job was to post a strong lap ‘to have in the bank’, before we unleashed Richard on a new set of tyres and a low fuel load to go for a top qualifying time in the third session. Joe duly banged in a 2m01.82s lap which was made us the quickest Pro-Am car at this stage, and was competitive enough for us to switch our qualifying strategy at that stage and go into ‘tyre saving mode’. This meant that we sent Richard out on older rubber to do his three required laps, and then brought him in to change onto the new tyres so that we had him ready to go out just in case it looked like would get bumped too far down the order. As the final session played out it, Joe’s time remained good enough for 4th in Pro-Am, and thus the decision was made to save the tyres and not send Richard out again. We were thus sitting pretty after qualifying, with two new sets plus a good quality scrubbed set of Pirellis to play with for the three-hour race.
Mark thus took the start in the black and red Vantage ‘mean machine’, and showed that he was in no way intimidated by the size and quality of the pack of GT cars around him. With him being up against many of the Pro drivers who had qualified behind us on the grid, we knew that he would initially lose a few places until the race settled down. His pace was extremely strong compared to that of the amateur drivers in our main opposition, however, and thus we knew that this was the key in setting the foundations for the rest of the race strategy. Importantly, he managed to stay on the same lap as the overall leaders, looked after the car and brought it into the pits in 5th place in Pro-Am (23rd overall) after an excellent hour long stint. The team then took over the good work, re-fuelled the car and performed the first of two super-quick tyre changes, then sending Joe back into the fray to carry on the fight. He immediately recorded some very quick laps, right on the times of the overall leaders, and settled into a consistent pace which saw him dispatch Pro-Am rivals Hommerson/Machiels/Bertolini (AF Corse Ferrari) and Hummel/Jans/Christodoulou (Black Falcon Mercedes) to claim third in class by the half way stage. By this point he was also holding his own in a battle for 15th overall with the all-Pro Fortec Mercedes and ART Grand Prix McLaren.
Shortly after the two-hour mark Joe returned the Barwell Aston to the pits for Richard to climb aboard and complete the race. After another flawless fuel and tyre service by the crew, Abra clearly had the bit between the teeth and was determined to repeat his storming finish of one week ago in the British GT race. On his third lap out he demoted the Pro class Fortec Merc and was running comfortably behind the factory Phoenix Racing Pro class Audi of works drivers Primat/Jarvis/Haase. He then mercilessly hunted down and passed the second placed Pro-Am GRT Lamborghini to claim the runner-up spot in our class and 14th overall. With 13 laps to go the Vita4One Pro class Ferrari 458 hit trouble, thus promoting Richard up to 13th position, and the youngster duly reeled off the remaining laps without any threat to record a great result for his and Mark’s first ever top level international race event. Despite us not contesting the first round of the BES at Monza, this result puts Barwell Motorsport 4th out of 24 in the Pro-Am Teams Championship points standings, and Mark, Richard and Joe in 5th position out of the driver crews.
Mark Lemmer, Barwell Motorsport Team Principal: “All of the drivers and the team did an incredible job at Silverstone, and this result was truly deserved. It has been an amazing start to our season, with success being achieved so early on with Mark Poole’s new Aston programme, combined with the great wins we have had with the Ecurie Ecosse BMW Z4 in both the ELMS and British GT. We now mustn’t lose our focus so we can keep this momentum going to the end of the season!”
Source : Barwell Motorsport