Gauld at the Blancpain GT Endurance

At the same time Blancpain, one of the world’s leading Swiss watch companies, sponsors what is claimed to be the fastest production car championship in the World… for Lamborghini Super Trofeo models. So what is the Lamborghini Super Trofeo? It is the latest development of the Lamborghini Galardo and the series has been so successful that Lamborghini has launched a street-legal version of the Super Trofeo but only building 150 of them.

There was another reason for going there. In 1982, Hugh McCaig and I reformed the famous Ecurie Ecosse racing team that had folded in 1971 after a chequered career that included two Le Mans 24 Hour wins (1956 and 1957, where they also took second place) with their Jaguar D’s. In 1986 the new team won the World Group C2 Championship with their Rover badged Metro 6R4 V6-engined Ecosse.

Now this year the team is back, not only in the Blancpain Championship in Europe but contesting the British GT Championship. The team bought last year’s Championship winning BMW Z4 to contest this year with five of Britain’s leading young talents at the wheel. For Paul Ricard the drivers were Joe Twyman, Olly Bryant and Ollie Milroy but they were struggling for pace. The Ecosse BMW is to 2011 spec but unlike most occasions at Paul Ricard, the usual chicane in the middle of the huge back straight was dispensed with in favor of a straight blind. After practice Olly Bryant remarked, “…it was quite demoralising as the Mercedes, Ferraris and McLaren’s were steaming past us about 17 kph faster than us”

In all, there were ten race prepared McLaren MP4 12Cs, five Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3s and not surprisingly, armfuls of Ferrari 458 Italias. What was surprising was the switching around of positions between them, in what is a very competitive series. In the end however, it was the squat Audi R8 LMS Ultra – not to be confused with the Le Mans prototype – driven by French ex-F1 star Stephane Ortelli, Christopher Hasse and Christopher Mies who won the three hour endurance race finishing a scant 5 seconds ahead of last year’s Blancpain Champion Bas Leinders with Markus Paittala and Maxime Martin in the works BMW Z4 second and the Stefano Gattuso, Davids Rigon, Daniel Zampieri Ferrari 458 Italia in third.

It’s a great championship with a great field of cars so if you live in Europe keep a look out for it at a circuit near you.

Footnote:

One of the support races for the GT event was the second round in the JK Racing Asia Series. This series, run out of Malaysia and aimed at bringing on far Eastern talent, uses basically the same Formula BMW series single-seaters that are quick and a good starting point for future talent. So I am looking through the entry list of mainly Malaysian and Indian drivers when I saw a familiar name, Walkinshaw!

Sure enough, it turned out to be 18 year old Sean Walkinshaw, whose father Tom Walkinshaw was a successful racing driver himself. Tom is best known for his TWR Jaguars at Le Mans, Arrows in Formula 1 and eventually the Australian V8 Touring Car series where he not only ran his own team of cars but ran the GM Holden racing team. Since Tom’s untimely death some years ago, his mother Martine Walkinshaw who was also at Paul Ricard, now oversees the Walkinshaw companies which are run by Sean’s older brother Ryan. Having started his gap year from college, Sean rented his seat in the Asian Championship to get the feel of the car as he is joining a British Team for the rest of this season’s BMW championship. Keep a look out for the name.