The main team activity this week was the training for the long-awaited race in Mount Panorama, the 12 hours of Bathurst.
We competed with two cars that both started strong and climbed the grid, close to p5 after the 2 first night hours. The rhythm was good but the mount is not forgiving to anyone. Some strategic and driving mistakes along with bad fortune to both cars, we failed to finish the race and see the chequered flag.
We promise that we will be even stronger next year and ready to take our revenge.
Leaving behind the bad results from Saturday’s race, we headed to VRS Endurance Series with the same car. The 3 hour race on Saturday, Andy Perrs and Nikos Efstathiou started the race in p29 and finished 11th a position lower than deserved due to a bad call in pit regarding the tyre change.
On Sunday we had two cars. The one with Nikos Efstathiou and Chris Kalamidas took advantage of the hard work of the training and from p12 they got to the podium in a very satisfying second position for the whole team.
At the beginning of the race we lost some time staying behind a big train although Nick was faster. Without making any mistakes and with good pace we pitted for the first time from 8th position. Chris was very steady and he gained some more places and we started the last stint from forth position.
The 2 pitstop strategy, without tyre change at the second, was better than the rest of the competition and Nick at the last stint was 15 seconds behind the leader, that had a new set of tyres, and over 40 secs ahead from the third. There was no point in fighting for p1 under the circumstances and we took the second that it looked easier than it actually was.
For the Academy Blue team Andy Perrs drove along with Stathis Bodiotis and Antonis Garatsidis and they finished in ninth position, the same they had started the race. The fact that we needed an extra tyre change from the rest of the field shows that there was a gap for a better result.
As we move to the end of the season the focus will be in GT3 races in beautiful and technical track of Suzuka giving our best as always. Stay tuned.
