Strong Euro GT3 Pro Cup result
Lamborghini Factory Driver Sandy Mitchell and team-mate Hugo Cook deliver strong Euro GT3 Pro Cup result for Barwell and Dama Fortuna. Tequila.
Sandy and team-mate Hugo Cook overcame an additional 25kg of ballast, plus being the innocent victim in an opening lap incident, to bag an excellent seventh on-track, plus another top 10 finish, in the latest GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Pro Cup double-header at Magny-Cours.
“That was a challenging weekend,” stated Sandy, the 25-year-old from Forfar who shared the No78 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2, prepared by Barwell Motorsport and backed by Dama Fortuna Premium Tequila, with Cook. “On the opening lap of the first race Hugo was forced off-track when two other cars came together. Thankfully he managed to get the Lamborghini restarted and carried on, but the incident dropped us to 38th in the 40-car field.”
With 32 minutes remaining, Cook pitted to hand the car to Sandy, with the Scot rejoining in 37th. A series of personal fastest laps meant that when the race was neutralised by a Full Course Yellow with 18-minute remaining, Sandy had climbed to 20th overall and 11th in the Pro class.
When the race went green again with 12-minutes remaining, Sandy immediately made another two places before taking the chequered flag in 17th overall and 10th in Pro class having clocked his fastest lap on the final tour.
Ahead of qualifying for Sunday’s second 60-minute race, the Lamborghinis in the field found themselves carrying an extra 25kg of ‘Balance of Performance’ ballast from when they arrived at the circuit on Friday. Despite that, Sandy qualified the #78 10th overall and ninth in Pro class.
Making a clean start and avoiding another opening lap incident which relegated two cars ahead of him to further back in the field, Sandy consolidated his new eighth place with a run of six personal-fastest times. Five laps later he went quicker again, clocking 1min 38.100secs. With 36-minutes remaining the cars ahead of him pitted. Now in the lead, Sandy took advantage by staying out for another two laps before pitting to hand the car to Cook.
“The team called the perfect strategy and backed that up with another super-fast pitstop,” he explained. “Then Hugo drove an excellent stint handling immense pressure and defending strongly, first from the #25 Audi, then the #48 Mercedes of the defending champions.” After the pitstops had unfolded, Cook was eighth, both overall and in Pro. But for the closing 20-minutes he was hounded, first by the Audi which was never less than half-a-second behind him. Then, following a late Full Course Yellow, for the final two laps it was the Mercedes that was right on his rear bumper. Cook robustly fended off the challenge to finish just 0.276s ahead. A post-race penalty to the #50 Ferrari then promoted the #78 Lamborghini to seventh. But there was one final sting in the tail. Two hours after taking the chequered flag, Cook was handed a 10-second penalty for a Full Course Yellow infringement which dropped the #78 to 11th overall and ninth in Pro.
“Given the challenges we’ve faced this weekend, with the contact in the first race plus the additional BoP weight we’ve been given, it was a super-strong performance by everyone in the Barwell team,” Sandy, personally-backed by Tunnocks, stated. “Not only did we show strong resilience, but everyone worked together to ensure we had the fastest car we could have. Two excellent top-10 finishes on-track, plus a good haul of championship points was the least we deserved. It’s just a pity the result was tainted by that post-race penalty.”
Sandy returns to action on the final weekend of August for the next round of the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Pro Cup at the Nurburgring.