The Newbridge team took the cars to Silverstone this week for both shake-down testing and coaching. My team mate Guillaume Gruchet has moved up from his 987 Boxster to a 997 GT3 Cup for this year’s races in the Britcar Endurance Championship and is being coached by ex-Formula 1 driver Mike Wilds who has bags of track experience and knows the GT3 very well.
My regular coach Malcolm Edeson joined me for the first time in my own race Boxster after the Newbridge guys fitted a passenger seat and extra harness. We had a particular lap time as our target and got quite close to it on the Toyo R888s left on the car from last season. By late morning it was time to scrub in my first set of the Dunlops slicks I’ll be using in the Britcar Trophy races. These might offer phenomenal grip when hot (worth 2-3 seconds off the lap time on the Silverstone International circuit) but the aim was only to scrub them – not wear them out! So back on the Toyos for a few more sessions before the heavens opened and we got to within half a second of my target.
Next outing is the test day before the first race, on the same circuit on Saturday 12th April.