Tom’s Longest Race Yet
The race weekend at Silverstone didn’t quite go to plan, but Tom completed his longest race yet with new race partner Jordan Collard.
The British GT Championship continued over the weekend with round 3. This time it was a 3-hour long race, requiring Tom to do his longest stints in the car yet.
Starting 29th on the grid was always going to be challenging for Jordan and Tom.
Jordan was quick off the mark and managed to make up 10 places, up to 3rd in the GT4 category, in only a few laps. Unfortunately he got a puncture after only 15 minutes and the car had to come in for a tyre and driver change.
What was thought would be a quick pit stop uncovered further damage which required some time to fix, so despite the crew’s best efforts, Tom was several laps down when he went back out.
Racing doesn’t always go your way, but Tom and Jordan finished the race, taking this opportunity to spend some time behind the wheel in true race conditions.
Catch up with Tom as he takes us through his race weekend.
Tom:
Friday wasn’t ideal, as we missed both sessions due to a fuel pump issue, but Jordan and I adapted really well on Saturday in the 2 practice sessions, given the changing circumstances. We found we had strong pace on the worn tyres, ideal for a long race ahead.
During qualifying I don’t think I quite optimised the use of the new tyres but think I did a solid enough job given the testing circumstances.
Jordan did a fantastic job adapting to the car so quickly and put us p9 on the grid. I don’t think that indicated our true pace but was still a good recovery given the lack of testing.
In the race itself, for 4 laps we were heroes with Jordan taking us to p3 and then he had some contact, causing a puncture, which led to us sitting in the pits for 13 minutes to fix the damage. Despite this, I still took my stint of 65 minutes. I just had to drive as quickly as I could and hope something would help us out. Nothing happened in the end but that’s just motorsport some days. We took the flag 6 laps off the gt4 leader, concluding a weekend to forget.
It was great to get some track time at a fantastic circuit like Silverstone. This was my first race on the GP circuit so I was getting used to parts of the track I hadn’t been on before.
I think consistency is something I really worked on and definitely improved on my ability to pull the most out of the car for long periods of time.
I’m very pleased with my stints, my first one was very consistent and I was able to pull out competitive lap times towards the end, even with the dying tyres and low fuel.
The second stint wasn’t ideal, it wasn’t up to the same standard as the first. I think this is partly due to the wear and tear on the car throughout the race.
I think I can be proud of my performance overall and I got the fastest lap between Jordan and I. Obviously it doesn’t matter because it’s a team effort but I am secretly a little bit happy about that!
