Earlier this year Briton Nick Tandy landed a factory deal with Porsche for 2013, and now the Trackspeed driver is in contention to win the Avon Tyres British GT Championship this weekend at Donington Park in a customer Porsche 997 GT3 R.
The 28-year-old, who won the Porsche Cup as the most successful privateer driver of 2012, is the tenth Porsche factory driver and joins a roster that includes Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas and Jorg Bergmeister, Marc Lieb, Patrick Long, and more recently a certain Mr. M. Webber from Australia.
Racing in a number of series this year, Tandy never thought he’d be in this position in British GT at the start of the season as he explained earlier this week to BritishGT.com.
“We went to Oulton and the goal was to win a race up there and be competitive and enjoy driving the car. When we came away having done that we thought we’d do it again.
“Trackspeed had the car for sale and it didn’t quite go through before the start of the season. I got in touch with a friend of David’s about something completely unrelated and he said in passing that David was planning on driving the car at Oulton as otherwise the car would just be sat in the workshop. I happened to be about and in the end it was a good idea.”
Tandy and the 66-year-old Serbian owner of Trackspeed, David Ashburn are an unlikely pair. Ashburn is the 2010 British GT Champion but has retired on several occasions, and Tandy is a young driver with his career in the ascendancy. However a common bond was struck; both drivers love to race and enjoy their racing.
Ashburn hasn’t shown the form he has in past seasons, but at the opening round at Cheshire’s Oulton Park circuit, the pair were unlucky to not leave with two wins.
“Oulton Park was a massive highlight,” said Tandy. “The first race I had a good drive through the field to get into the lead. The second I had a great fight with Allan Simonsen; that was good hard-fought racing. It something I’ve never done before with Allan and sadly I will never do again. As a team it was a high point as we won both races as well with Phil Keen and Jon Minshaw taking the first race victory after our tyre issue.”
A fascinating statistic have developed this year and that is that Tandy and Ashburn have only one in the 60-minute sprint races, and only when the British driver starts the race.
A retirement from Rockingham due to a mechanical issue was problematic but not disastrous, unlike the following round at Silverstone where Ashburn destroyed the Porsche before Tandy even got an opportunity to get belted into the 997 GT3 R, Ashburn hitting the pit wall on entry to the pit road.
Snetterton provided joy in the second race, another win, and a victory in the final race in Zandvoort also added colour to their season.
“If Oulton was our high point, race one at Zandvoort was the low point,” remarked Tandy. “If Zandvoort had gone to plan we should’ve been in the lead of the points after the weekend. If David had won the first race we could’ve taken the penalty in the second and fought for a podium, coming to Donington penalty free. But it didn’t work out like that and it was such a shame as we were so dominant that weekend.”
With Ashburn being docked points for driving infringements, the most recent being awarded at Brands Hatch for the pit stop mix-up, the Pro-Am British GT series could have a solely ‘Pro’ winner for the first time.
We asked Tandy how he rated his chances at taking the title.
“I think this years car will be better suited to Donington, and we’ll be quick no matter what the weather does. Having said that the problem for us is it is going to be tough to make up the additional pit stop time. Twenty seconds is a lot of time, so we’re going to need some help. Someone either needs to hold the pack up or we need a Safety Car period to back the field up for us. In a straight race we don’t have much hope so we need to have a think about the best race strategy after practice.”
The Avon Tyres British GT Championship arrives at Leicestershire’s Donington Park GP circuit for the final round of the 2013 season this weekend. Two 60-minute free practice sessions start the weekend (09:35 and 11:40 BST) before qualifying begins at 15:45 BST later on Saturday afternoon. A ten-minute warm-up first thing on Sunday will give drivers an opportunity to shake down their cars before the main race, a two-hour winner-takes-all thriller starting at 13:15.