After what can only be described as a disastrous attempt at yesterday's IVRA Endurance series, where we found ourselves unable to compete due to driver ineligibility, today's GT Sprint event carried even more importance to the team than would normally be the case.
We have two cars successfully qualified for this series, one each in divisions 2 and 3. The #256 division 2 car was driven solo by Jason Dilworth in this round, while the Division 3 car was driven by Ryan Hamilton and Ayden Refaie.
Qualifying rolled around quickly, and both cars got solid banker laps in early on in the 20 minute session. All 54 cars were on track together, so those bankers can be extremely important. That turned out to be the case for Jason, who couldn't improve for the rest of the session. Ryan, however, put in a great effort late in the session to put the #356 on class pole position. The #256 started P8 in class.
The race started interestingly, with lots of shuffling going on as expected and a couple of spinners to avoid in turn 2 of the opening lap. It turned out that the #356 car had made a mistake at the beginning and had to take a drive through penalty early on. These things happen early on in new rules, and it's unfortunate that it had to be a Prestanda NOMAD car, but lesson learned for future races.
After some intense battling for both cars throughout the 1hr55min race, the #256 moved up the field to finish up P3 in class for an early podium to start the season, while the #356 held off a late charge from two fast charging class competitors to end up taking home a solid P6.
The team take some huge positives from today's racing and look forward to the rest of the season.
Jason (#256) had this to say:
This field is incredibly competitive – I was out there putting in qualifying effort laps for just under 2 hours just to stay on race pace. A great result to get third in the opening round, and hopefully we can continue that into the rest of the season.Ryan (#356) sums up his race here:
As a first race in IVRA for myself and Ayden, I could not be happier with our solid points score for the first round at Nurburgring. Today was a great day for NOMAD and with a solid foot on the leader board for round 1, this will give us the drive to improve and show our true grit and pace at Imola!Ayden (#356) sums up here:
Overall a pretty chaotic race for us, from having to serve a drive through to gaining the positions back. We had strong pace at the start and I couldn't recreate that in the latter stages but very confident in our chances next race.