This years Barcelona 24 hour race saw victory for the Czech based Scuderia Praha in their Ferrari 458 GT3.
Completing a total of 653 laps, 7 more than the second place Kessel Racing Ferrari and 12 laps ahead of the third placed Hofar Racing Mercedes SLS.
“The car ran like the proverbial clockwork. We didn’t have any problem throughout the race. I am really happy,” said Dutch driver Peter Kox, who drove the car across the finish line to take the chequered flag.
The car moved up into first place of the 65 car field during the fifth hour of the race and held on to the position for the remaining 19 hours, gradually building up a margin of seven laps with consistently fast lap times, quick pit stops and a trouble-free race. “A fantastic result, I am delighted,” said Jirí Písarík, who got his first experience of driving at night during the race. With a lap time of 1:51.404 minutes, Italian driver Matteo Malucelli set the fastest lap time of the race early on Sunday morning.
There were mixed results for the many British teams that had entered with the best results falling to the APO Sport Renault Clio cup of driven by James May, Alex Osborne and Peter Venn and the Zest Racecar engineering Seat Leon Supercopa. Both took third in their respective classes with the all British driver line up of APO Motorsport claiming 37th overall after completing 533 laps of the Circuit de Catalunya. At the halfway point the team were leading their class but an electrical problem cost them an hour in the pit lane and the subsequent 3rd place finish.
Zest Racecar Engineering took the highest overall finish with their international drivers bringing the Seat Leon home in 21st overall.
Synchro Motorsport and RKC/TGM were also competing in the same class as APO Motorsport with the Synchro Honda Civic claiming 4th in class and 41st overall. The Swindon based team whose driver lineup included the 2012 Britcar champion, Martin Byford briefly held first in class but extended pits stops to deal with amongst other things an exhaust problem and buckled steering arms saw the team lose time and slip down the order.
RKC/TGM also driving a Honda Civic Type R finished 44th overall and 6th in class after gearbox problems saw the team slowly losing gears until at the end of the race they limped over the line with just 5th gear. The team had also managed to lead their class however they lost over 2 hours replacing a broken clutch which then lead to the gear box problems.
Down in 46th place saw the BMW 135d GTR of Saxon Motorsport which ran most of the race with the front of the car missing to expose the radiator in an effort to deal with cooling issues blighting the team. The result gave them 8th in class.
Further up the field the Track Endura Lotus Evora GT4 finished 24th overall and 5th in class 2 places ahead of the Intersport BMW M3 CSL which finished 5th in class. The Dual racing Seat Supercopa took 32nd place ahead of the WEC motorsport BMW M3, WEC taking 6th in class behind Intersport whilst Duel took 4th in class behind Zest.
The KPM racing VW Golf of Tom Onslow-Cole, Javier Morcillo, Paul White and James Walker finished 36th overall and second in a class that started with 4 competitors and finished with just two.
Unable to finish the race were Blendini motorsport whose BMW M Coupe retired after 12 hours completing just 137 laps and Britcar regulars, the Simpson Motorsport Audi R8 which competed In the top class for just under 9 hours before mechanical issues saw the team withdraw having completed 214 laps.
Full results can be found at LINK By Jurek Biegus.
