BALON JOINS BARWELL AND KEEN FOR BRITISH GT
British GT4 race-winner Adam Balon will step-up to the GT3 class next year with Barwell Motorsport and join Lamborghini factory driver Phil Keen in the new Huracan GT3 Evo.
Balon has been victorious in each of the past two years in GT4 with a Track-club Mclaren, since stepping up from the Lotus Cup in 2017 and views GT3 as his next step on the ladder to Le Mans.
Having suffered with poor reliability this year that prevented him from seeing the chequered flag after the opening Snetterton race in May, Balon told MN that he is optimistic of an upturn in fortunes with Keen, who has finished as runner-up for the past three years with Jon Minshaw.
“Barwell have always shown that they’re right up there and maybe could have won it a couple of times, so they’ve definitely got the pace and performance and reliability, hopefully they can do that again this year with me,” he said.
Balon was impressed after testing the updated Evo version of the Huracan at Barcelona and is eagerly anticipating a return to Oulton Park, where he’s won twice, for the season-opener next April.
“I’m super-excited, I’ve learned a lot in GT4 and I’m really looking forward to playing with the big boys,” he said. “We’re planning together to put on the best possible showing we can, we’ll be dedicating time and resources to it to make sure that we do a proper effort.
“It would obviously be amazing if I could make it a hat-trick [at Oulton], but mostly I want a good showing, get the thing off to a solid start and build it from there. It’s important not to set expectations too high at the very first race, but I like the circuit and we’ll see what happens, if it rains it could be good news!”