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New Delhi - The opening round of the FIA GT 1 World Series in Nogaro, France featuring JK Tyre racing driver – Armaan Ebrahim and French driver Julien Jousse was riddled with extreme cold and wet weather conditions. The two drivers racing in the BMW Z4 GT 1 Car with the BMW Sports Trophy Team India used most of the first practice session running in the new car and doing system checks. The second practice session was very productive for Team India, with both drivers finishing in the top 10 consistently.
Qualifying 1 with Armaan Ebrahim in the driver’s seat was in fully wet conditions, and went very well for the Indian driver, who qualified thirteenth overall and second in the Pro Am Class. It was during Qualifying 2 that things did not go as per plans for the team. Julian Jousse started the session in dry conditions, but when he left the pits after a change of tyres, there were yellow flags in 3 corners for the remaining of the session, which meant he could not put in a fast lap. This dropped the team down to seventeenth overall to start the first race.
Race 1 was the highlight of the weekend for Team India, as they were up to seventh place starting seventeenth, and second in the Pro Am Class. With just one lap to go, a hit from behind by a Nissan GT caused the car to spin around, and by the time the driver recovered the car and brought it to the finish line, they lost 4 places and thus moved down to eleventh overall and third in the Pro Am Class.
Race 2 was a disaster to start with, as the stewards handed out a 30 second penalty to Team India for the incident the previous day, stating that the accident could have been avoided. The baffling penalty and an issue with the rear suspension, suspected to have been caused by a Damper failure prevented the drivers from giving it their all, which reflected in their overall performance.
Commented Armaan: “We had a good start to the weekend but a few unfortunate incidents pushed us back. The GT cars are different from the Formula Cars we’re used to, so there is still a lot of learning to be done. I am happy with the good performance in the wet thanks to the correct set up we had during the qualifying rounds. Race 1 was very good as we finished 3rd in the Pro Am Class and 11th Overall despite getting hit from behind which cost us 4 places.
“Race 2 was a total disaster but then we have to put it behind us and look forward to the next race. Overall, its been a decent start. The car needs another 8 km of speed down the straights in comparison to most others and a bit more of traction and am sure that this will be taken care of by the engineers before the next race. We also need to improve our pit stops and driver change over process by at least another 8 to 10 seconds as this plays a crucial role in the overall race.”
