Punctures at GT3 Season Finale

Punctures deflate Lamborghini Factory Driver Sandy Mitchell’s GT3 Season Finale with Dama Fortuna and Barwell.

Lamborghini factory driver Sandy’s season ended under the bright floodlights at Jeddah in Saudia Arabia at the final six-hour round of the Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup. But any hopes the 24-year-old had of a Bronze Cup podium were ultimately ended by two high speed punctures. Sandy was partnered by team-mates Till Bechtolsheimer and Ricky Collard in their No 78 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo 2, prepared by Barwell Motorsport and backed by Dama Fortuna Tequila. In a race punctuated by full course yellow and safety car periods, on his in-lap before handing the car over to Collard after 67 minutes, Bechtolsheimer suffered a puncture.hoped for.”

“Till did a fantastic job to retain control of the car and nurse it back to the pits,” Sandy, personally-backed by Huntly-based Black Bull Scotch Whisky and Tunnocks, explained. “But the time delay knocked us off the lead lap.” When Sandy took the car from Collard two hours into the race, the Scot immediately set the car’s quickest lap round the daunting 3.8-mile, 27-turn Jeddah Corniche Circuit on the shores of the Red Sea, eventually improving to 2mins 01.118secs.

Sandy’s times came despite the car having suffered damage in the opening stint which directly affected the car’s aero efficiency.
Midway through his in-lap to hand the car back to Collard, Sandy too suffered a right-rear puncture at a high-speed section of the circuit. The incident pitched the #78 Lamborghini into a spin leaving a meandering trail of black rubber on the multi-coloured paint of the run-off area. Fortunately Sandy was able to halt the car before it made contact with the barrier. With the car facing the wrong way, he was able to restart the Lamborghini and again nurse the car back to the pits.

“It really just wasn’t our day,” admitted Sandy, whose #78 Lambo eventually battled back to finish eighth in the Bronze Cup and helped Barwell seal third place in the Teams’ Championship. “We made a whole load of time back in my first stint, then that was all undone by the second puncture.”
Collard and Bechtolsheimer completed their second stints, leaving Sandy to race the final hour. But any hopes he had of repeating the fightback of his first stint were scuppered by a 20-minute full course yellow and safety car period, with the race only returning to green with 22 minutes remaining.

“That was frustrating because it bunched the whole field up nose-to-tail again meaning I had a whole load of slower cars in front of me that I just couldn’t pass,” he continued. “It was a real pity because the Jeddah track is brilliant in a GT3 car. It’s a high-speed circuit which demands a lot of both the driver and the car. But while it was a fantastic location to finish the season, there’s no denying the result wasn’t what we’d hoped for.”