Darren Turner felt confident with the pace of his Beechdean Aston Martin Racing car from the start of the weekend, but was unable to show the improvements made to the race pace following an early retirement from the fifth round of the 2018 British GT Championship at Spa Francorchamps on Sunday.
Following a positive start to the weekend, the team made key setup changes to the number #99 Aston Martin ready for qualifying. Turner was surprised to only be ninth on aggregate with his team-mate Andrew Howard, but later said: “My feeling is that we ended up with a car with good race pace but no one-lap magic for Qualifying.”
So heading into the race both Turner and Howard were feeling confident ahead of the two-hour race, which Howard would start following a positive warm-up session.
But it was all over so soon, with cars colliding ahead of him at Eau Rouge, Howard did his best to avoid the carnage but made contact with a Lamborghini which damaged the Aston’s radiator so had to pit for repairs.
Beechdean AMR did a fabulous job and were able to repair the car, but as they couldn’t do the mandated 70% to score points, they stopped the car to save themselves to the next race.
After the race, Turner said: “Despite the result I feel that we have made a good step in the right direction with the performance of the car,” said Turner. “We’ve made good progress and we’re feeling positive for the next race at Brands Hatch.”
The next round of the 2018 British GT Championship will take place at the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit on 4-5 August.
