King’s racer Perez back in hot seat
MOTOR SPORT PAUL HORTON
FORMER King’s School race ace Seb Perez’s first weekend back on track was one of misfortune at Circuit Paul Ricard.
The 21-year-old ended with a knock after the duo of Perez and George Gamble from Nottinghamshire crashed out of Saturday’s final race in the highly competitive GT4 European Series at the French Grand Prix Circuit.
All was not lost in the pair’s first outing with Swiss based R-Motorsport Team in the #762 Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT4 – the rest of the weekend saw both drivers get better every lap and their pace was strong.
These were the first steps for Perez and Gamble in international GT endurance racing after the team paused its activities, cancelling the five races planned for them as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
The whole aim of the weekend was to get used to the car as they had not been out fully in the vehicle for about 13 months apart from a brief spell back in March this year.
It was a long weekend for them both, starting early on Thursday with two official test sessions on the 5.842km circuit for them to get to grip with the 4 litre V8 twin turbo supercar.
Perez took to the car as if he had only driven it yesterday, in his usual style he was blowing time off each lap and both drivers in both sessions finished with some of the fastest times on track and top ten places.
That was the easy bit over – two free practice sessions followed on Friday with Perez in the driving seat in session one.
It was a dry track to start with but a downpour during the session left it damp, Perez managing a 14th place finish with a top speed of 154.3kph and 2m.15.778s to get the Aston Martin around the circuit.
Gamble took the reins for the second afternoon session on the dried out circuit to finish 12th across the line.
Time was tight as the team worked hard on the car to get it finely tuned for the night time qualifying session that was in two 20 minute slots.
As before Perez took to the wheel for the first stint and all eyes would be on him, he was hot off the mark.
Lap 7 proved his fastest, only 2.82 seconds off the fastest on track to finish 10th. Gamble then brought the car home in 9th in the second session.
Saturday was race day that saw two races, a morning race for one hour’s duration followed by the final race of the season, an hour and a half after sunset.
As the lights went out for race one Perez was consistent throughout his stint until the pit lane window opened – that meant a mandatory driver change to Gamble.
Both drivers worked to keep the momentum up and the car in the right direction that saw them home in 12th place with a top speed of 154.5kph and only two seconds off the pace of fastest on track.
As darkness fell on the circuit for the final race the cool dry night was set alight with blazing headlights from the 19 cars and the sound was astounding.
It was Gamble’s turn to take first stint and Perez to await in the pit garage in eagerness to get back behind the wheel.
Things didn’t go to plan and to the disappointment of both drivers, Gamble made contact with a Mercedes that put their Aston Martin out of the race on lap 2, game over.
After the race Perez said: “It was really a great experience to do an event in a new car considering we should have been racing in this season’s championship.
“It was nice to go and race in the last race of the series.
“It was not the result we had planned but we went to learn and develop everything for the 2021 season.
“I think the pace was strong given we hadn’t driven the car for 13 months and were improving every session”