FIA GT3 Championship - Silverstone
Scene At Silverstone – Thursday - Silverstone on a very pleasant Thursday afternoon, and it was mainly GT3 teams (and news), if only because the GT1s and GT2s don’t get onto the track until Saturday. One piece of GT1 news though, and it’s confirmation that Michael Bartels is not racing this weekend. Vitaphone Sporting Director Rafael Calafell confirms that Bartels “had a small surgical operation in mid-April, but he’ll be back for the next race.” Mika Salo returns to an MC12 for Silverstone, partnering Thomas Biagi. So onto the GT3s, and Rikky at Trackspeed confirms the six drivers for its Porsches at Silverstone:
#4 Ryan Hooker / James Pickford
#5 Richard Williams / Alex Buncombe
#6 Paul Warren / Chris Hyman. Team owner David Ashburn was otherwise engaged this weekend, but he’ll be completing the balance of the season with Ryan Hooker, while Richard Williams’ regular partner for the season is known and confirmed, but not quite ready to be announced yet. Tech 9 were ready to go, apart from Phil Quaife (below) and Tom Ferrier working hard applying decals. Phil Hindley was on track this afternoon, “running in the engine on the yellow car” - which has yellow highlights, as opposed to the red and blue of the other two - the yellow one for Peter Snowdon and Dimitris Deverikos. The Damax team shook its three Ascaris down at Donington Park this morning, but Steve Ridgers confirmed that, as of yesterday, the Ascaris have been hit with an extra 60 kg of ballast. The suggestion had been that the Ascaris would have to take a 10% power cut, which would have been taken care of with a cut in revs., but the Ascari runners argued that that would ruin the homologated gearing of the cars and make them uncompetitive, so 60 kg it is. Presumably that applies to all Ascaris in all GT3 series. “Last year we ran with 100 kg of ballast, an increase in the ride height of 7mm and hard Michelins: now we get another 60 kg,” commented Steve Ridgers. Still with Ascaris, the Berlanga cars wil be driven by
Klaas Zwart / Erik Zwart (Klaas’s son)
Dan Gibson / Michael Greenhaugh
Paul Gibson / Ben Collins (Paul Gibson is Dan’s father). “Ben Collins has been confirmed in the last five minutes,” says team manager Neil Layton. He wasn’t terribly happy with the extra ballast, pointing out that “in the latest balance of performance tests we were the slowest in every sector, and we only made up time in the twisty bits. We believe the extra ballast is unfair.” Richard Stanton will be racing an RPM Viper this weekend (see below), but he explained that “my classification as a silver driver screwed my Ascari drive with Rob Barff. Rob was going to drive with me – but you can’t have a gold driver with a silver. I think I should be a bronze.” Richard Stanton’s other news is that “we’re bringing out a GT car – starting in the British Championship.” He wouldn’t say who “we” might be and wouldn’t identify the car – except to say that no one else is running one. Hmmm. Onto GT4s, briefly, and Graham Humphrys, Chief Engineer for Motorsport at Aston Martin, was applying Pirelli stickers to one of the N24 vantage cars. “I think GT4 is going to be big,” he said. “They’re so close to production cars: it’s a proper gentleman’s series. It’s got huge potential – provided they can keep it (costs) under control. At Paul Ricard, the Vantage was about 10 seconds slower than the GT3s, which were about 10 seconds slower than the GT1s. That’s about right.” Back to GT3s – and the new Jaguar XKRs. Two Apex Motorsport cars will be present this weekend (so they won’t be able to score points – not without the requisite three), and they’ll be raced by Stuart Scott / Chris Ryan and Christian Dick / James Littlejohn. The latter is Tony‘s son, Tony Littlejohn having raced in British GTs not too long ago. Correction: "I am in fact the son of ex-Porsche Open and Britcar racer Mark Littlejohn and am not a relation of the former GT racer Tony Littlejohn," says James Littlejohn. “They’ll both be here tomorrow,” explained Stuart Scott. “Engine preparation has been taken over by AER as of last week, and one engine came back yesterday and the other one today.” “We turned to AER to help us sort out the management of the supercharger temperatures,” explains Richard Lloyd. Scott was keen to point out how hard Dave Ward and all the team have been working on this project: “Their commitment has been fantastic, they’ve worked very long hours – as have Steve Wood and everyone at ART. The paint job on the cars is superb, and they’ve been working late too. They’re now painting the fourth car which will become the third race car.” The Jaguars will sport sponsorship from SILVERJET, an arrangement which was confirmed on Tuesday of this week. This airline flies business class passengers from Luton to JFK, and they’ve got a large number of VIPs coming to see the Jaguars race on Sunday. Finally for now – RPM and its Vipers. The drivers are
Alex Mortimer / Gilles Duqueine
Rob Wilson / Mikael Forsten
Richard Stanton / Ed Morris. Robin Mortimer’s team has accomplished a huge amount in the last 12 days, since being asked if they would like to enter their Vipers in the European Championship. That has included finding drivers for the third car in the last five days (this Viper provided by Ruffier Racing, but running in RPM colours, by Ruffier mechanics) – those drivers being Stanton and Morris.  “Our third (RPM) car is still sitting at Oreca,” said Robin Mortimer, “there simply wasn’t time to get that sorted out.”
On the job list was fitting Gilles Duqueine’s hand controls, which has made the cockpit (right) “rather busy” according to Alex Mortimer – who has yet to drive a Viper on Michelins. His chance will come tomorrow. There were a number of late driver deals being completed elsewhere around the paddock this afternoon, but doubtless it will all be sorted before the track opens tomorrow. The last three images - and first of all it's the Racing for Belgium Aston Martin, running as a Hexis entry this weekend, three of the Lamborghinis, which are expected to be very quick, and the pretty SRT GT1 Corvette, for Tom Cloet and Pertti Kuismanen. | 
