Pals Watson and Eastwood back to resume WEC battle at Spa
THEY are former flatmates and both are part of the Aston Martin Racing set-up, but Charlie Eastwood and Andrew Watson will go head-to-head for rival teams when the World Endurance Championship resumes in Belgium today.
The split season series was suspended in March when the coronavirus struck, by which time Eastwood and his driving partners Jonny Adam and Salih Yoluc had won three of the five rounds for their TF Sport Aston Martin team in the GTE/AM division.
Fellow Ulsterman Watson regularly drives a Garage 59 Aston Martin in the Blancpain European GT Championship but has been allowed to step up to the WEC series with the Gulf Porsche team, gaining his first podium alongside Michael Wainwright and Ben Barker with third place in the Bahrain 8-Hour race in December.
This weekend, Watson is back at his favourite track, the daunting Belgian Grand Prix circuit at Spa.
“It’s been a long six months but Spa-francorchamps is the perfect place to get the WEC season back up and running. It’s an amazing track to drive and we’re confident of a good showing,” said the Tyrone driver, who made his first appearance after the Covid-19 break with second place for Aston Martin in the World GT Challenge Silver Cup section at Imola last month.
Eastwood returned to action last week, taking sixth and third places in the two-part GT Challenge round in Hungary alongside Yoluc in the new GT3 Aston Martin Vantage.
“It was good to set some mileage in the new GT3 car but now it is the GTE version which was really on song in the earlier part of the WEC series,” said Eastwood, who celebrated his 25th birthday earlier this week.
At the front of the field, Toyota and Rebellion resume their battle for overall victory in their LMP1 prototypes ahead of next month’s rescheduled Le Mans 24-Hour race in which Eastwood and Watson will also feature.
The six-hour race is at 12.30pm.