Debrief with Christopher Mies

Suffice to say, Christopher Mies is a very busy chap. In between a full-time schedule racing in the Blancpain Sprint and Endurance Series, the German can be found racking up the air miles as part of his role on the Audi Sport customer programme with JAMEC PEM Racing and Greg Crick in the Australian GT Championship. So it was somewhat apt that when I finally met up with 26-year-old Mies, who added victory in the Nürburgring 24 Hours to his repertoire earlier this year, it was just after the completion of the podium celebrations at the Spa 24 Hours, where he, Christian Mamerow and Nicki Thiim finished third.

For much of the race, the no. 5 Phoenix-entered R8 LMS had been fighting an uphill battle. After the lead trio benefitted from an untimely Safety Car to pull a gap of around half a lap over the rest of the field, a tyre gamble intended to recover the lost time failed to pay off when the rain returned just a few laps after switching to slicks, leaving the no. 5 crew with a lot of catching up to do. But after plugging away over the night stint and charging through the early morning, a podium finish was sealed in the final hour when the no. 99 ROWE Mercedes was forced to retire.

Mies was in justifiably good spirits after the race (own photo).

“Finally we got the podium, it was a really long race, a long night for sure!” said Mies afterwards. “To finish a 24 hour race in these bad conditions is never easy. I took the start for a three hour stint and the conditions were unbelievable, there was so much water, I couldn’t see anything, I was on half power on the straight because you don’t want to be the guy who crashes on the first lap or in the first hour.

“We made one wrong tyre choice in the beginning which cost us a lap and we were unlucky with the safety cars as well, so we were always a bit behind and couldn’t get that back properly, which meant it was like a sprint race for us from start to finish, but it worked out okay in the end!”

Mies was full of praise for team-mate Thiim, the Dane catching the eye with some electric times in the morning as the no. 5 gradually worked itself back into contention, and sympathised with the sister Phoenix car piloted by Andre Lotterer, Marcel Fassler and Mike Rockenfeller, which hit several problems en-route to fifth.

“I think that’s normal for Nicki, there is something definitely wrong with him but in a good way!” Mies laughs. “He is always quick, which is why we put him in for the end. For me, he was the quickest Audi driver all weekend, he did a phenomenal job, he was relaxed and cool and he just did his thing which is going very fast.

Mies (second right) celebrates with Mamerow (left) & Thiim (centre) (Vision Sport Agency).

“It’s not easy to drive these cars when you only do it once a year, so [the no. 6 crew] did a very good job,” he added. “You can’t expect them to be on the same pace as us when we are in the car almost every week, the LMP is a bit different to our car and you have to get used to not having so much horsepower and aero, they did a phenomenal job.”

After the torrential rain and mist of Spa, next up for Mies is another trip back to sunny Australia, with Sydney Motorsports Park playing host to Round Four of the championship. Currently third in points after a tough weekend on the streets of Townsville, Mies is confident of getting back into the title hunt.

“Sydney has a lot of high speed corners which should suit our car I think. It’s quite hot in Australia so it’s hard to be in the car for an hour, but the team is doing everything to give us a car which is comfortable to drive and so far they’re doing a great job.

“I really like it there, I drove there for the first time in 2011 and enjoyed it and always wanted to come back for a proper season. The people there are very nice, the spectators know you and all about your career and want to chat with you. I’m just trying something different and I couldn’t be happier.”

How to Survive 24 Hours

With more than sixty GT3 cars representing 11 manufacturers set to do battle for 24 Hours around the majestic 7km Spa-Francorchamps circuit, we should be in for a classic this weekend. But how do the drivers go about tackling the poker game that is a 24 Hour race? We asked an expert panel for their top tips.

Panel: Joe Osborne (BMW), Martin Plowman (Nissan), Marco Seefried (Ferrari), Mirko Bortolotti (Lamborghini), Lewis Plato (Mercedes), Stuart Leonard (Aston Martin).

Preparation

As the jewel in the crown of the Blancpain Endurance Series calendar and with double-points to boot, it pays to be prepared for the Spa 24 Hours.

In their first season of GT3 with the new Huracán, the Grasser Racing Lamborghini squad have been testing extensively to be ready for Spa, with Paul Ricard pole-sitter Mirko Bortolotti, 25, heavily involved.

“Everything needs to work very close to perfection, it’s the ultimate challenge for the man and also for the machine,” says the Italian. “As everyone knows, the Spa 24 hours is a special race and it’s not necessarily going to be won by the fastest car. It’s going to be very tough, you have to be physically fit and mentally ready as well, but it’s the same for everyone.”

Bortolotti will be hoping that the Huracan can last the
distance at it's first 24 hour race (Grasser Racing).

For rookie Lewis Plato, 22, this weekend will be a step largely into the unknown, making good preparation all the more valuable.

“I’ve never had any experience in a 24 hour race, not even in a 12 hour race; the longest I’ve ever done in the car is an hour and a half, so I’ve been trying to make sure I’m as fit and as prepared as I possibly can,” he said. “I’ve been doing two to three hour cardio-vascular sessions each day and also wrapping up in warm clothing, because if you’re in the car for a two or even three hour stint then it can get quite hot and you want to be prepared for it.”

“I don’t do a lot differently from a driving point of view – making sure you’re hydrated is the main thing, because as any sportsman will tell you, a loss of hydration means a loss of concentration,” adds Triple Eight Racing’s Joe Osborne, 26. “Spa is quite an easy one to prep for because you get so much track-time in the build-up, which it gives you a chance to work through all of the procedures, where you’re going to overtake cars, what gear you’re going to be in, where you’re going to speak to the team on the radio and all the mundane stuff like that.”

Composure

The old adage ‘to finish first, first you must finish’ is never more apt than in a 24 hour race, where everything can change in a matter of moments. MRS Nissan driver Martin Plowman, 27, knows this fact as well as anybody; the Briton took LMP2 class honours in the 2013 Le Mans 24 Hours, but only after a late scare when team-mate Bertrand Baguette spun in monsoon conditions less than an hour from the finish.

Plowman (right) survived the rain to win Le Mans in 2013 (Francois Flamand).

“I remember that like it was yesterday, it was pretty terrifying!” Plowman recalls. “It was torrential rain, the cars were on slick tyres and all we could see was our car sideways to the camera, backed up against the wall, the car behind was missing its front end and we thought for sure our race was done. It just goes to show that the race isn’t over until you cross the line.”

One overtaking move is highly unlikely to win you the race, but can quite easily lose it and it is the ability to guard against poor decision-making during the night and early morning which can separate the best from the rest.

“The biggest thing that I try to hammer home to my co-drivers is the kind of mentality you need to have and how that differentiates from a two hour or a six hour race,” says Plowman. “You have to modulate the risks you take – if you’re racing someone for position in the fourth hour and the level of risk to pass them is at a point where you might crash, you have to ask yourself whether it’s worth it just to gain one place, when that same guy might be in the pits with a gearbox failure in a few hours’ time. You always have to bear in mind that the people you’re racing in the 20^th or the 24^th hour will be completely different than the ones you’re racing now.”

“You have to have the mentality that no-one has got mirrors and no-one has seen you,” agrees Osborne. “Each move I do is calculated. If you’re going to overtake, you have to get fully past before the turning point, because if they turn in on you, it’s as much their fault as yours.”

Osborne likens Spa to '24 one hour sprint races' (Olivier Beroud).

Setup

But whilst it is true that thinking drivers may prosper, that doesn’t mean the pace is in any way reduced.

“Put simply, Spa is pretty much 24 one-hour sprint races and the amount of cars on the grid mean if you have to pit outside your window, it’s pretty hard to come back from,” Osborne says. “It’s a tough race to get a result at; there’s no other 24 hour race in the world with that calibre of driver all in the same machinery, so you have to make sure you’re well and truly on it.”

Fashioning the optimum setup for more than one driver is one of the peculiar quirks of endurance racing, but all the more vital for Pro-Am entries where each driver has very different requirements. Finding a compromise between a consistent, predictable car which gentlemen drivers can handle and the Pros can still compete with is a delicate balancing act and one which Rinaldi Racing’s Marco Seefried, 39, is well accustomed to.

“By the fact that we are driving in a Pro-Am car, the most important factor for me is that we have a not too difficult car to drive,” says Seefried, who also finished second in GTE-Am class at Le Mans alongside actor Patrick Dempsey. “But at the same time, it still it needs to be competitive; you can’t sacrifice everything for the driveability, because an easy-driving car is not always fast!”

Set-up is particularly important for the Pro-Am entries, such
as Marco Seefried's 333 Rinaldi Racing Ferrari (Olivier Beroud).

Leonard Motorsport AMR owner-driver Stuart Leonard, 24, learned this the hard way last year, but is confident that his team is better positioned to compete this time around, with a confidence-boosting first Pro-Am win at Silverstone now under their belts.

“There were a lot of mistakes made on our side last year, we just didn’t have the setup for the car quite right,” says Leonard, whose challenge will be bolstered by the addition of 2013 pole-sitter Stefan Mücke. “We had to learn what we could and take that forward for this year, which we’ve done. We have potential for sure, but whether it will actually happen, we’ll have to see.”

Night racing

It’s when the lights go down and the day turns to night that the men are separated from the boys. Where a confident, experienced driver can make up for lost time and begin to pull a gap, others enter survival mode.

“Personally I do enjoy it, there’s an inner calm and peacefulness about driving at night where it’s just you and the car. I find it quite romantic!” says Plowman. “Things tend to speed up because your point of reference is so much shorter than in the daylight, so things start coming at you two or three times faster. You’ll see laptimes drop off by a couple of seconds for a guy that isn’t used to night driving, but a veteran driving at night will be more consistent. It’s something that you’ve just got to get used to.”

Romantic? You could say so (Brecht Decancq).

With only one class of car, one would expect closing speeds would pose less of a problem than at Le Mans or Daytona. But with such a wide range of abilities among the drivers – sometimes within one car – it can make for some nasty surprises.

“Spa is pretty extreme in that respect because it’s so dark. It can be quite surreal because you can’t see anything but the track, there’s no other distractions,” agrees Osborne. “The headlights are so good on these cars, the only negative is the guys behind you their headlights are blindingly bright, which can make it quite hard to judge where the car is behind you, all you can see is a wall of light, that could be five metres away or five hundred metres away.”

Bortolotti is a relative newcomer to night racing, but is ready to meet the challenge head on.

“I haven’t driven so much in the dark, but we have a good lighting system in the Lambo so I will get used to it – I have no other choice!”

Sleep

Seefried considers Spa to be the “most exhausting” of all the 24 hour races he’s been a part of due to the combination of sheer number and the circuit’s unrelenting nature, making it all the more imperative to get rested up when not in the car. But as you might expect, that’s no easy feat.  

The Leonard team will be hoping to avoid a
repeat of last year's misfortune... (Olivier Beroud).

“It is very hard – the first race I did at Le Mans I couldn’t switch off at all and stayed awake for the entire 36 hours,” confesses Plowman. “Trying to sleep was impossible, because you’re on that high and when you’re out of the car you just want to keep up with what’s happening on-track. You just have to learn to distract yourself and almost force yourself not care about the race because there’s nothing you can do to change what’s going on.”

Letting go is harder still when it’s your name above the door.

“Last year was terribly difficult, my adrenaline was buzzing until around 4 AM but I was still in and out of the car until 9 and I eventually crashed around 10 sat in the chair with the engineers,” says Leonard. “We had this big caravan thing booked, but the company we were renting it from went bust on the eve of the race and the only option we had was to put air-beds where the car normally is in the lorry; there was very little sound-proofing or anything like that, so you could hear the droning of the engines going round and round. Fortunately though we seem to have got it sorted for this year!”

The Spa 24 Hours begins Saturday at 3:30 (BST).

Introducing: Lewis Plato

By his own admission, Lewis Plato will have a lot to learn on his Blancpain Endurance Series debut at this weekend's Spa 24 Hours. But with several eye catching performances in the British GT championship under his belt, Plato’s no. 71 GT Russia Racing Mercedes, shared with Marko Asmer, Alexey Vasilyev and Indy Dontje, could well be one to keep an eye on.

Whilst the 22 year old motorsport engineering student at the University of Hertfordshire has little to show for his exertions in the RAM Racing prepared Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 alongside Alistair MacKinnon – a fine fourth place at Rockingham the only bright spark in a season blighted by misfortune not of his making – Plato’s race pace has usually been strong, an encouraging sign for a driver in who only last year was racing national-level Radicals. As such, the star-studded line-up assembled at Spa has come as something of an eye-opener. 

Fourth at Rockingham confirmed Plato's promise (Jakob Ebrey).

“I was at the 24 hour test and you’ve got people like Alex Zanardi walking through, your heroes who you used to watch on TV and all of a sudden you’re on the same circuit as them, so it’s massively exciting, I can’t really believe where we are in such a short space of time,” he says. “I’ve never had any experience in a 24 hour race, not even in a 12 hour race; the longest I’ve ever done in the car is an hour and a half, but it’s always good to throw yourself in at the deep end because it forces you to learn quicker.”

As a learning experience, going twice around the clock at Spa will be right up there with the best.  Although the recent British GT round will have provided him with some useful circuit knowledge, Plato will approach the event without any expectations and hopes to glean as much as possible from 2007 British F3 champion Asmer, one of the few English-speaking team members.

“I’ve got knowledge of the circuit from the Test Day and the British GT race, and obviously the benefit that I race the Mercedes usually, so the main thing for me will be learning the Pirelli tyre. It has a much better one lap pace compared to the Avon but they also seem to drop off quicker as well, so tyre management and degradation will play a lot bigger role than I’m normally used to. Generally though the SLS is good on its tyres, so I couldn’t wish for a much better car for my first 24 hour race.

Plato will join Asmer, Dontje and Vasilyev at GT Russia (Jakob Ebrey).

“We’d love to come away with a good result but we’ve got to be realistic; first of all you’ve got to survive the whole 24 hours to be in position for a good result. The trick will be not to have any unscheduled pitstops – if you can go throughout the race with no issues then you’re bound to be on for a fairly good result. You’ve got to keep as calm at the end of the race as you were at the start, you can’t start over-driving and working the car too hard, because that’s how you make mistakes. I’m just going there with my eyes open and trying to enjoy every moment that I can.”

That said, Plato won’t be a passenger and with so many components that can (and do) fail over the course of 24 hours – the sight of Adam Christodoulou frantically battling to re-attach the wheel on his SLS at the roadside made for one of the more enduring memories of the Nürburgring 24 – his grounding in engineering could be a useful asset to the team.

“From what I’ve seen some drivers have a very good understanding of the car, others less so, but it can only be a positive to understand exactly how that car works inside and out,” he says. “The lecturers there being motorsport people are always happy to help and they’re flexible with me getting the time off if they need to; of course they really like the fact that they’ve got a student who is currently racing!”

Plowman Gunning for Spa Podium

Martin Plowman has set his sights on a podium finish at this weekend’s Spa 24 Hours as the MRS GT team look to close the deficit to fellow Nissan outfit RJN. The 27-year-old, who will be sporting a new red livery on the no. 73 GTR-NISMO this weekend, is targeting a clean run after mechanical issues eliminated the all-British crew from podium contention the last time out at Paul Ricard.

Godzilla will look suitably mean on track at Spa (David Lord).

“Whether it’s realistic or not, a podium is our aim, but we would take a top ten,” says Plowman. “The test went well for us at Spa, but you can never really read too much into that because some guys were sandbagging and some weren’t dialled in. I’ll reserve any judgement until race week when people started putting laps down in anger.

“The race is such a lottery and it’s one of those that can come down to reliability and not necessarily being the quickest car. Any team that runs smoothly with no issues, doesn’t get caught up in crashes, penalties or have any mechanical problems is instantly going to be considered for the top five. First and foremost we need to focus on making sure the car is bullet-proof and that the drivers stay out of trouble, after that hopefully we’ll be in good shape.”

With certain niggles inherent to the homologation of the car hampering MRS in both the Sprint and Endurance championships, Plowman, Craig Dolby and Sean Walkinshaw have struggled to hit the same heights as the RJN team, which qualified on pole at Silverstone and took victory at Paul Ricard. But removing qualifying from the equation, Plowman believes that their race pace is comparable and will materialise into good results with more experience in the car, starting with the Spa 24 Hours.

Dolby and Walkinshaw have featured strongly at times in
 the Sprint Series, seen here in Moscow (Olivier Beroud).

“So far, we’ve had better pace at tracks where we didn’t think we’d be strong and our pace at tracks where we thought we’d be strong wasn’t quite what we were expecting,” he says. “It’s such a competitive series that if you miss the setup or the Balance of Performance isn’t right, you can easily end up in 30^th place, but equally it doesn’t take a lot to swing a weekend from being below average to being a great weekend.

“There have been plenty of times when we have had the race pace to beat the RJN car, but we just don’t have the qualifying pace yet to get us in a good starting position. But for the Spa 24 Hours the qualifying position is even less important than it would be for a six or a three hour race, so even if we don’t get the qualifying right for this weekend, I would hope that our race pace would pull us through and barring any mechanical issues we should end up where we deserve to be.”

Sky's the Limit: Leonard

The sky is the limit for the Leonard Motorsport AMR team ahead of their second attempt at the Spa 24 Hours, says team boss Stuart Leonard. The 24 year-old, who completes a strong driver line-up headlined by 2013 Spa 24 Hour pole-sitter Stefan Mücke, double Porsche Carrera Cup GB champion Michael Meadows and BTCC race-winner Tom Onslow-Cole, is full of confidence after an eye-catching cameo in the recent British GT meeting at Spa and has backed the team to challenge for Pro-Am honours in the biggest race on the GT racing calendar. 

Leonard passes Lee Mowle's BMW at Spa en-route to second (Pedro Dermaux).

“The sky is the limit for us; we’re going to really give it everything and I have every confidence in the team, but at the same time it’s a 24 hour race and anything can happen,” says Leonard. “We have a fantastic line-up of drivers and a very good team underneath us, which is how we won Silverstone; every pitstop was perfect, every call was bang on and nobody made any mistakes. It’s when all of those things work that can give you a chance of a good result.”

Although business commitments meant Leonard was unable to attend the Test Day, he and Meadows – who finished third – still found the British GT meeting on Avon tyres and with no ballast a useful confidence-boosting exercise.

“It was a good experience, it gives you an understanding of the right places to overtake and helps you get your eye in,” he added. “Of course there’s positives and negatives to it, a lot of people would say the Test Day with the correct Pirelli tyres and the correct weights in the car would be much more beneficial, and they’re probably right, but due to work constraints I didn’t have any other choice. However, from a team point of view and from my point of view, the British GT round actually worked better than we initially thought it would, because there’s nothing that can replicate being on circuit with other cars in a race scenario.”

Leonard has high hopes for his team after winning Pro-Am at Silverstone (Xynamic).

Despite sheering a bolt on the steering at Paul Ricard, the Leonard team are still in the running for the Pro-Am title, and with double points on offer at Spa, there is no shortage of incentive.

“You do look at it from a championship perspective for sure as there are double points on offer,” Leonard said. “Ricard unfortunately didn’t go our way; we had a blinding start but one of the bolts snapped on the steering rack, which was extremely frustrating, although we did our best to make it back and made up a couple of points by the end. But at the same time it would be fantastic to have the win and stand on that podium. We have the potential for sure, but whether it will actually happen, we’ll have to see.”

Seefried Proud to be ‘Top Ferrari’

Rinaldi Racing’s bright start to the Blancpain Sprint and Endurance Championships has been one of the feel-good stories of the season so far, pleasing none more than Marco Seefried. The German, who is competing on both fronts alongside Norbert Siedler, recorded his first podium in a feature race at Moscow Raceway after taking second in the Sprint, vindication that in the right hands, the Ferrari 458 Italia can compete with the dominant Audi R8 LMS.

“Everybody told us that we should really think twice about doing the entry for the Sprint series because other Ferrari teams had tried before and they all struggled,” he said. “Some tracks fit a car and some tracks don’t, and they said somehow the Sprint calendar is not a good one for the Ferrari and that it’s really hard to compete against the Audi, but we are more than happy with our performances.

Seefried and Siedler took Rinaldi's first
feature race podium in Moscow (Olivier Beroud).

“People said Nogaro was one of the worst places you could go with the Ferrari, but we finished fourth and fifth and at Zolder we were the only ones who could compete with the Frijns-Vanthoor car, so we were really happy about that. It’s not just the budget that's different – WRT have been in that series I think from the beginning, so they know the tracks, they know the format, they know everything, but we are new there and we don’t have a big budget to go testing. We’re now looking forward to the rest of the season and happy to say that Rinaldi Racing has consistently been the strongest Ferrari in the Endurance Series as well.”

Had it not been for some first-lap incidents not of their doing at Zolder and Paul Ricard when well-placed, it could have been better still for Seefried and Sielder, who sit ninth and second respectively in the combined Blancpain GT drivers’ standings courtesy of the latter’s win at Monza, where Seefried was absent. The no. 333 was fortunate to emerge from a first lap skirmish at Moscow instigated by Enzo Ide which claimed pole-sitter Albert von Thurn und Taxis, and Seefried is not alone in hoping driving standards improve in the second half of the season, starting with the Spa 24 Hours.

“At least at Moscow we made our positions back, but what disappointed me most was the stewards. At Zolder they said it was just a regular racing incident and Paul Ricard was even worse because the Bentley was not even on the track when he hit Norbert and only got a 10 second penalty. The punishment should always be in relation to the race format, because if you get a ten second penalty in an hour sprint race then your race is screwed and you would think twice next time, but in a six hour race, you still have lots of time to recover. And it wasn’t like they were taking out the backmarkers, they took out the McLaren who won overall at Silverstone and the Ferrari which won overall at Monza, but so it is. I’m just the driver, I have to take what they decide, but I don’t have to agree with them.”

Seefried (right) took second in GTE-Am at Le Mans
alongside some illustrious company (John Rourke)

Though would be wrong to wrong to say that 2015 has been a breakthrough year for Seefried, it could be argued that this is the year his talents were recognised by a wider audience – particularly female fans of the TV show Greys Anatomy. Alongside his Blancpain commitments and a GTD campaign in the Tudor United SportsCar Championship for the Magnus Porsche team, Seefried is the third cog in the Patrick Dempsey-Patrick Long axis in the World Endurance Championship, exposing him to the media spotlight like never before.

“What you say is 100% correct, the attention on the no. 77 car caused by Patrick Dempsey was extremely high!” says Seefried. “I knew what would be the task this year and the media attention, but I admit that I didn’t expect it to be so great. I have to say I admire Patrick for how he can handle all that, it’s ten times more attention than I had or even more! 

"He has a full schedule, he is booked every minute for an interview here, a short take there, and then when it comes to practice, qualifying and the race he has to be spot on. It’s something if you are not within the team and you don’t see what’s going on its difficult to understand or imagine how much pressure he has, and of course the 24 hour race brings the biggest pressure. He will always get compared with guys like Steve McQueen, which is something he never asked for, it’s all done by the media, but it’s not something he can get away from either.”

Seefried uses all of the road at Silverstone (Gabi Tomescu).

One of Dempsey’s life ambitions was to stand on the podium at Le Mans, and after Long successfully fended off Townsend Bell’s Ferrari, in the early hours of Sunday morning, Seefried was able to cross the line in a safe second place in GTE-Am, a remarkable feat at his first attempt at the French classic.

“I just tried to focus on the driving and help Patrick where I can. Both me and Patrick Long did around 10 hours and Patrick Dempsey did somewhere between four and five, but still he didn’t do any mistakes. With all the attention and all the pressure that was on him he couldn’t; in Le Mans you know this is the biggest endurance race on the planet and everyone is watching. If you do fine you are the hero, but if you fail you are the biggest idiot on this planet.

“You don’t think about it before while you’re in the race, but once you cross the line there was a lot of pressure lifted, off Patrick especially, because that was one of his biggest dreams to be on the Le Mans podium. I won’t say that the rest of the WEC season isn’t important anymore because that would be wrong, but the biggest attention and focus was on that one for sure. It was my first start there as well, so I’m really proud of that.”

Lamborghini well prepared for Spa: Bortolotti

Mirko Bortolotti is confident that the Grasser Racing Lamborghini team are sufficiently prepared to compete for top honours at the Spa 24 Hours. 

The new Huracán has shown promise from it’s very first race at Monza, where Andrew Palmer, Fabio Babini and Jeroen Mul dominated before being disqualified for a minor technical irregularity, but is still unproven over 24 hours. 

Nevertheless, Bortolotti – who qualified on pole for the Six Hours of Paul Ricard and delivered the Huracán’s first win as an invitational entry in the ADAC GT Masters at the Red Bull Ring – believes that the car can be a factor on its 24 hour debut, just as the latest evolution of the Audi R8 was at the Nürburgring.

Bortolotti (right) took the new Lambo's first win in Austria (Grasser Racing).

“Up to this point I’m very happy with the work we’ve done,” said Bortolotti. “The pace has been strong in all the races and we’ve done lots of endurance test sessions without having many major issues. We think the car is ready for this race, and it’s obviously a benefit to have a cooperation on some parts with the Audi R8, which managed to win the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring. The car is still in the development phase, but we showed in the last couple of races that the pace is quite good, so I’m very confident and optimistic.”

Bortolotti himself is also new to 24 hour racing and has limited mileage in the dark, but has a keen appreciation of what it will take to be at the sharp end on Sunday.

“The Spa 24 hours is a special race and as everyone knows it’s not necessarily going to be won by the fastest car,” he added. “It’s more or less like a poker game, because you can lose everything in one shot. You have to know when to push in the right spots and be mentally clever at other times when it comes to overtaking lapped or slower cars. You can gain a lot of time there but you can also lose the race there, which makes it interesting! You have to be perfect for 24 hours, try to avoid any troubles and then we will see where we are at the end.”

David Russell – Broadening Horizons

European audiences watching Round Two of the ADAC GT Masters at the Red Bull Ring could be forgiven for asking just who was this Australian bloke taking the fight to the championship regulars? Sure enough, in amongst the familiar contingent of Porsches, Corvettes, Nissans and BMWs, the howling Reiter Engineering Lamborghini Gallardo shared by David Russell and former F1 driver Tomas Enge made quite an impression, winning the opening race before adding a further maximum points haul for finishing second in race two behind the invitational works Lamborghini Huracan. For Porsche Carrera Cup Australia frontrunner and occasional V8 Supercar racer Russell, this isn’t the kind of opportunity which presents itself all too often, and one he made sure to grasp.

“I totally didn’t expect it; to get the call from Reiter to come out and to then get a race win and a second in the next one was definitely a dream come true,” he recalls. “Tomas had said to me it would take a little bit to get used to, because the Red Bull Ring is the sort of track where you have to attack with the right amount of exuberance to get the most out of the car and yourself. There’s a lot of heavy breaking, but it’s also very technical with all the camber changes. All the guys at Reiter did a fantastic job and I’m very happy with how it went.”

Russell and Enge were imperious in Austria (ADAC GT Masters). 

Coming hot on the heels of Shane van Gisbergen’s victory in the recent Blancpain Endurance Series round at Silverstone, Russell’s success at the Red Bull Ring shows that the boys from Down Under have all the necessary tools in their locker to succeed in Europe; if ever they could tear themselves away from dreams of winning over the legions of Holden and Ford fans camped on Mount Panorama by adding their names to the Peter Brock Trophy.

“I think to begin with, you can be quite closed-minded in seeing the V8 Supercar Series as almost the be-all and end-all,” says Russell, who will again partner Rick Kelly for the three Endurance Cup races at Sandown, Bathurst and Surfers Paradise. “But we all know what makes motorsport tick and if you haven’t got that family wealth, you have to rely on sponsors. If you can’t compete with that, you don’t want to be banging your head up against a wall. 

“GT racing in the last three years has gained some massive momentum and the cars are great fun to drive too. I did a test at Hockenheim and I just couldn’t keep the smile of my face, so I started to look outside of Australia to see what opportunities are out there, but it’s difficult because first of all you need a team to give you the opportunity and then work out where the backing is going to come from. Is the team able to stand on their own two feet with their own funding to get a driver across, or is that driver going to bring something to the table as well? I’m fortunate enough to have been given a very good opportunity with Reiter, they’ve seen my experience and invested in that, so hopefully something grows from there.”

Of course, Russell’s trip to Europe, which also encompassed a visit to the Le Mans 24 Hours, didn’t exactly end as planned. Following a heavy shunt at Stavelot during qualifying for the second of his two planned outings in the ADAC GT Masters at Spa Francorchamps,  Russell and compatriot Steve Owen were forced to withdraw, a timely reminder – if ever one was needed – of the Belgian circuit’s brutally unforgiving nature ahead of next month’s Spa 24 Hours. But with Australian racing legend Craig Lowndes – who notched up his 100^th career victory in V8 Supercars at Hidden Valley last weekend – returning for another crack at the biggest GT race of the year alongside car owner Roger Lago, Russell and Owen, there is significant potential to be unlocked from their new Gallardo LP560 R-EX, which Russell qualified on the front row for the Bathurst 12 Hour earlier this year. 

On the front row at Bathurst alongside lap-record holder Laurens Vanthoor (Bathurst 12 Hour).

“It will be awesome to have Lowndsey on board because he’s got so much experience and in Australian motorsport, he’s the top dog who everyone looks up to, so using him as a benchmark will be great,” says Russell. “Of course absolutely anything can happen over 24 Hours, but first and foremost you obviously need to finish. We got to the 13-hour mark last year but had a couple of dramas with the car, so we decided to pull the pin rather than keep going around and potentially having the same problem again, which was really disappointing. But I have every confidence in Roger – and for a bronze gentleman driver he’s very quick! It’s a great combination with some fast pro drivers in Craig, myself and Steve Owen as well. And as we saw from last year, even if you start down the back you’ve still got a chance, so let’s see how we go.”

In a Pro-Am class bolstered by factory drivers including Gianmaria Bruni, Stefan Mucke, Dirk Muller and Bernd Schneider, there will be no easy pickings and the all-Australian Lago crew will certainly go in wearing the underdog tag. But free from the stresses of going for the Blancpain Endurance Series title – not to mention the relative anonymity to be enjoyed in Europe compared to the pressure-cooker environment of Bathurst – Russell is relishing the fight and has his sights set on a spot in the 20-car Super Pole; no mean feat in an entry of 66 cars.

“The atmosphere at Bathurst is just incredible: people know the drivers, co-drivers and all that, so there’s no absolutely chance of slipping past someone out the back of the pit area!” he laughs. “Certainly to come over for a huge race like the Spa 24 Hours, there’s a certain degree of pressure there because it’s such a huge race and you naturally want to do well, but the pressure is only as much as you put on yourself. Definitely not being part of the full championship over here allows you to not have that added pressure of certain backers or sponsors attending the round. We just can’t wait to get over and get amongst it in the Aussie spirit!”

ELMS Austria: Game, Set, Match, Jota!

Jota Sport took a well-deserved first victory of the 2015 European Le Mans Series with a measured drive in a race dogged by Safety Cars. After Harry Tincknell qualified on pole, Filipe Albuquerque twice saw his hard-earned lead eliminated by the intervention of the Safety Car – firstly when Nicolas Minassian spun into the gravel and again for debris strewn across the road by an errant LMP3 – before handing over to Simon Dolan, who crucially fended off the challenge of TDS's Pierre Thiriet and executed a perfect switchback manoeuvre when the Frenchman lunged up the inside at Turn One. Tincknell then took over for the final stint and managed to build an advantage of 13 seconds over Tristan Gommendy before another Safety Car - this time for a shard of carbon fibre at Turn Nine - brought TDS back into play with 40 minutes remaining.

Tincknell was able to close out Jota's first ELMS win of 2015 (Nick Dungan).

While TDS brought Gommendy in for a splash of fuel, Jota left their man out and it appeared as though the pendulum had swung away from them. Tincknell was unable to build a gap big enough to resume ahead of the marauding Gommendy after making his own stop, but it was to prove academic when the TDS man was hit with a stop/go penalty for ignoring the red light at pit exit.

Behind, the action was just as frenetic. A terrific double-stint from Michael Lyons looked to have put Murphy Prototypes in position to take home their second podium in as many races but with just ten minutes to go, Nathaniel Berthon was pinched into a spin by Jesse Krohn’s Marc-VDS BMW, dropping the Irish team to a disappointed sixth. Their misfortune promoted the SMP Racing BR01 of Mikhail Aleshin, Anton and Kirill Ladygin to the rostrum on only the car’s third outing, with the Greaves-Gibson of Gary Hirsch, Bjorn Wirdheim and Jon Lancaster just three seconds adrift after being delayed by two penalties and being held at the end of the pitlane under the Safety Car.

GTE was an equally close affair and only decided on the final lap in the favour of Formula Racing’s Mikkel Mac, Johnny Laursen and Andrea Rizzoli. After a minor fuel irregularity relegated their pole-sitting car to the back of the grid, a storming opening stint from Aaron Scott, a consistent drive from Duncan Cameron and a typically professional stint from Matt Griffin looked to have the no. 55 AF Corse Ferrari in the pound seat, only for Mac to pounce on the final lap with a robust move into Turn 2 that also ensures the no. 60 crew will take the championship lead. Matteo Cressoni, Raffaele Giammaria and Peter Mann completed Ferrari's podium sweep in third, with the Marc-VDS BMW and Proton Competition Porsche rounding out the top five.

AF Corse collected GTC honours after Dermont's mishap (Nick Dungan).

Victory in the GTC class looked to be heading the way of the TDS BMW team until Eric Dermont lost control at turn three, only narrowly avoiding the Pegasus Morgan of Julien Schell. The time lost in the gravel eventually handed victory to the AF Corse trio of Thomas Flohr, Francesco Castellacci and Stuart Hall, with Dermont's team-mate Franck Perera just managing to hold off Kristian Poulsen’s Massive Motorsport Aston Martin for second by a margin of 0.187 seconds.

In LMP3, Charlie Robertson and Sir Chris Hoy put a troublesome Imola weekend behind them with a dominant win, some five laps ahead of Villorba Corse pair Roberto Lacorte and Giorgio Sernagiotto. With only three finishers, GT Academy winners Mark Shulzhitskiy and Gaëtan Paletou completed the podium in a distant third.

Is Porsche racing undervalued?

In the week leading up to the British Grand Prix, James Newbold asks whether one-make Porsche racing is undervalued.

Shunted into the support paddocks, without the hype surrounding future F1 stars populating the GP2 and GP3 paddock, it’s fair to say that the Porsche Supercup isn’t the most fashionable of series on the F1 support bill. But it could be the most important. It was in Supercup that Rene Rast, Kevin Estre, Norbert Seidler and Nicki Thiim launched their careers as professional racing drivers, and the Supercup that Nick Tandy and Earl Bamber – who won the Le Mans 24 Hours alongside Nico Hulkenberg in June – used as a springboard to join Porsche’s factory roster.

So just what is it about one-make Porsche racing that produces such a stellar roster of talent? For Tandy, who finished second in the 2010 Supercup – his first full-season racing Porsches – and won the Carrera Cup Deutschland in 2011 before being promoted to a full works driver for 2013, the enormous pressure of a compartmentalised F1 race weekend goes some way to extracting the best out of drivers.

Tandy enjoyed Supercup success before joining the factory roster (Luca Barni).

“You have a very short practice session followed by qualifying and you’ve got to put the lap in,” he says. “It does teach you about handling pressure and preparation for the weekend, and that’s not just in terms of actually driving and testing the car. You have to make sure everything is operating at 100% all the time, otherwise you’ll lose.”

Indeed, such is the strength in depth of the Supercup field that the tightrope walk to success can be determined not only by outright pace, but in whoever makes the least mistakes. This year has seen three different winners in as many meetings, with Jaap van Lagen and Christoper Zochling winning in one-off entries in Monaco and Austria and a clear favourite yet to emerge.

“I think more than anything that shows what a good level of competition there is within the series,” says Tandy. “You look at Carrera Cup Deutschland for example and there are twelve or fifteen top drivers there capable of winning races, so to come out on top and win championships, you’ve really got to raise your own level, which builds everyone into better drivers. It means that when you go on to do something else you’ve got that good grounding - it’s not like you’re fighting against one or two drivers or teams; you’re fighting against 75% of the grid, so if you have an off-day and you’re a couple of tenths off, it could be disastrous!”

Carrera Cup GB championship leader Dan Cammish is hoping to become the fourth different winner at this weekend’s British Grand Prix support. After serving his apprenticeship in a GT4 Porsche in the British GT championship last season, an impressive guest appearance in the Carrera Cup at Brands Hatch – where he qualified on pole for both races, winning one – was enough to convince sponsors to back Cammish for a full-season, where he has won six out of eight races and yet to finish lower than second. In preparation for his Supercup debut, Tandy put Cammish in touch with Konrad Motorsport for an eye-opening Carrera Cup Deutschland outing at the Lausitzring, where he took home two twelfth place finishes.

Cammish extended his winning run at Croft last weekend (Malcom Griffiths). 

“It’s a great place to be for any driver given the careers it’s launched and personally I don’t think there is a harder one-make championship out there,” says Cammish of the Carrera Cup. “The German series is effectively the same grid as Supercup so it was incredibly competitive – I believe Kuba Giermaziak was the only one missing from the regular Supercup on that weekend – and if you do well there, you deserve to be a pro. If you don’t hook up the perfect lap or you’re just a little bit off your best then you’re nowhere and unfortunately everyone’s so good on the limit that it’s really difficult to overtake. I think there were three and a half tenths between first and twelfth at the Lausitzring, which is just ridiculous!

“That said, we did okay. We were quite strong in the races but we just struggled with some issues with the car in qualifying, which is to be expected when you’re with a new team and you don’t get a lot of time in the car, but it was good to experience. I’m really looking forward to Silverstone for my home Grand Prix in my own car, with my own team and on a track I already know unlike Lausitz, so hopefully we can have a really good showing there.”

Tim Harvey knows more about Porsche racing than most. The 1992 BTCC champion, who now serves as the Director of the Superstars programme responsible for looking after up-and-coming British talent, enjoyed several years racing in the Carrera Cup GB after his retirement from touring cars, winning the title in 2008 and 2010, and now commentates on them for ITV. He says that drivers using the Carrera Cup as a means to a professional career in motorsport is no new phenomena.

“I was racing Carrera Cup at the end of my career but there were plenty of drivers like Richard Westbrook and Damien Faulkner who were looking to build their careers and have indeed done so,” Harvey says. “It really depends on what level you come into it. I personally came into Porsches after a career in touring cars and I was 50 years old when I stopped, so rightly it wasn’t a stepping stone for me for a future career. But had I been getting those results aged 20 or 25 it might well have been, and indeed was for several of the drivers I raced against and currently.”

Cammish leads a strong Carrera Cup GB pack at Croft (Malcom Griffiths).

As a visual spectacle, Harvey says the Carrera Cup is unrivalled on a normal BTCC weekend.

“There is nothing like a grid of nigh-on thirty Porsches, 460 horsepower cars all going hell for leather because the race is thirty-odd minutes long and you know that whilst there will be a certain amount of tactics and tyre conservation on some circuits, every single lap is driven like a qualifying lap,” he says. “Admittedly because you start the fastest driver on pole you don’t always get loads of overtaking like you do in touring cars, but in terms of pure, competitive motorsport, there isn't anything better out there. It’s still the fastest one-make series in the world and one-make racing always produces great drivers because they have the same equipment as everyone else, which means they have to work that bit harder for it.”

“It’s very aggressive,” agrees Cammish. “The racing is relentless, kind of a throwback to my Formula Ford days. If you’re not attacking, you’re defending, and often doing both at the same time.”

That means it is attractive to sponsors too.

“You could back a driver like Michael Meadows, Josh Webster or Dan Cammish and know that you were guaranteed a level of performance and success in whatever category they sponsor them in. Cream always rises to the top and if you’ve got a competitive championship with a lot of good people in it, especially in one make series where ultimately it’s not about who has the best car, the guy who wins is naturally going to be a very talented driver,” Harvey adds.

But for Cammish, the main allure is the opportunity for progression within the marque. Tandy and Earl Bamber offer the prime example, having each been promoted to Porsche’s LMP1 effort via the GT ranks – plucking Bamber from the relative obscurity of the Carrera Cup Asia – to win the biggest race in the world and a Rolex which money can’t buy.

“I think Porsche do a great job with their promoting from within, which is nice to see,” he says. “Maybe it’s changing, but I still think a lot of people have the idea that if you’ve done GP2 or World Series then you’re better than someone who hasn’t, when that’s clearly not the case. It’s just the fact that some people have better opportunities or more money to get them where they need to be.”

Porsche Junior Sven Muller and former Supercup champion Kevin Estre finished
third at Spa when called up to the works Porsche GTE team (Sven Muller Official).

The Porsche Junior program is a big help in this respect, with 2015 hopefuls Sven Muller, Connor de Philippi and Matteo Cairoli all aspiring to follow in the footsteps of Timo Bernhard, Patrick Long and Marc Lieb.

“It’s virtually a career path ahead of you as long as you can perform,” says Tandy. “I only wish that I could have been involved in it when I was starting racing with Porsche, because if you get picked up early you get all the benefit of everything the factory does for its drivers. Of course when you go racing you’re on your own, you have to compete against everyone else on the same level, but look at Sven Muller this year; he’s proved himself to do a good job in Carrera Cup and Supercup, so when Porsche needed an additional driver at Spa when we were short, he was the one that got the nod. It’s a huge thing for any young, aspiring driver. The Porsche scheme, it’s such a clear path to the highest level of the sport. It doesn’t matter what your background is – if you keep performing and keep winning, then they look after you.”

So is Porsche racing undervalued?

“It does get the recognition it needs, it’s just that people are talking about Formula One all the time!” Tandy says.

“My question is, undervalued by who?” agrees Harvey. “It’s certainly not by the people involved or by people within the sport who recognise how tough and competitive it is. I remember a couple of years ago the entire grid of the Supercup championship, the average split time in qualifying was 1 second covering 18 cars over the season and there’s no other formula which can boast that level of competition.

“Formula One is still the pinnacle of our sport and occupies 95% of all motorsport coverage so people are naturally looking for the next F1 stars on the support bill, but having said that, there are probably more professional drivers employed by manufacturers and teams in sports and GT cars that naturally come from Carrera Cup or Supercup than anywhere else.”

And that, boys and girls, is why you should ignore the Porsche Supercup at your peril.

This article was also featured on BadgerGP.