Thrown plenty of challenges!
The first Donington Park race of the season threw plenty of challenges at the Academy team. On race day, heavy rain on the formation lap forced Race Control to abort the start. Slick tyres were swapped for wets before the race officially began behind the Safety Car.
Throughout the subsequent chaos on track Academy team Manager, Andrew Dean remained in full control: “It was a bit of a lottery. Obviously, the changing weather conditions didn’t help and we tried to avoid making unnecessary pit stops under green flag conditions. We stuck with the dry setup on the car which made it a bit of a compromise for traction in the wet. Lots of Full Course Yellows, lots of Safety Car periods. We try to utilize the safety cars as best we can, which we felt we had done rather successfully. But for car #62, on the last Safety Car period; when we exited the pits the safety car overtook a number of GT4 cars to pick up the GT3 leader. That effectively put us a lap down when we were lying about fifth overall. Matt showed superlative pace and picked up fastest lap along the way, with Erik just one-tenth of a second behind. We had the pace to deliver a podium, if not a double podium but sadly were thwarted by the safety car”.
