Monza / The International GT Open, former F1 driver Jesus Pareja’s successful European GT sprint series, called in at the Monza circuit, in the vicinity of Milan this last weekend. For the occasion Enzo Ide together with teammate Maxime Soulet were back with the Aston Martin Brussels by GPR Racing outfit, the team with which he had on several occasions been successful this season; namely the championship races at Paul Ricard and Spa-Francorchamps. As opposed to the two first weekends of the International GT Open, in which Enzo Ide had competed with the Aston Martin V12 Vantage, this weekend held in the boot of Europe was not an immediate hit. “It might well be a cliché, but once things go wrong a whole series of problematic weekends follow on, and this happens in sport. It’s similar to football, a loosing team always seems to get the bad balls”, Enzo Ide acknowledged. “Our weekend kicked off in a most unpleasing manner with a last minute somewhat exaggerated adaptation of the technical regulations to our detriment … and so the tone was set.”
Similar to the other GT championships the International GT Open also undergoes adaptations in the field of the Balance of Performance. In Monza the Belgian team manned by Enzo Ide and Maxime Soulet, were advised that the Aston Martin V12 Vantage GT3′s air intake needed to be reduced. The size of the air intake determines the car’s power, something that can be a determining factor to produce a good result on a fast circuit such as Monza …
Enzo Ide: “Monza, that implies pedal to the metal up to the first chicane, then hard baking, followed by flooring it up to the chicane and over again… It’s pretty disappointing when you see the other cars just merely pulling away from you … on the straight. The adaptations we were instructed to carry out were quite simply too far fetched. After the qualifying sessions a bonus was allocated, but by then the game is already more than over. You find yourself somewhere at the back of the starting grid. It is unfortunate that matters should transpire like this, because the team is exceptionally motivated to produce something good and prior to the trip down to Monza we had hoped to still be fighting it out for the title in GTS (GT3).”
The races still had to be held, but here also Lady Luck was to play a poor hand on board of the British muscle car. In the first race held over 70 minutes, just prior to the finish a component in the gearbox gave up the ghost and the car retired, which was also the case on the Sunday race when the splitter loosened. In both cases a place in the top-10 was lost. Theoretically the Belgian Soulet-Ide duo could still claim the title in the GTS class, but actually in the first instance more especially the Aston could be in contention for the bronze medal in the International GT Open final classification, which with 30 cars has shown to be the strongest sprint championship for GT cars in Europe.
Enzo Ide: “The Nürburgring, Hockenheim and now this … It’s enough to make one despair. It is said bad luck comes in threes, well that’s the proof. I don’t know what the remainder of the season has in store, but we’re going to run through all the points and then we’ll see …”