There were steady but encouraging results from both the Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 powered crews at the end of another weather affected GT Winter Series event and their stand-alone 6Hrs of Portimao.
Just the two AMR powered entries over the originally indicated three cars saw the Belgian based Comtoyou Racing team go ‘head-to-head’ with their Spanish stablemates from the E2P Racing team. Competing amongst another diverse grid of sixteen other GT3, Cup and GT4 entries, their objectives where different but the scope of the exercise for both crews was simply get back into the racing mode ahead of the start of their intended series this summer.
The #007 Comtoyou entry of Oliver Soderstrom, AJ Muss and Baudouin Detout claimed the qualifying honours over the #90 E2P Racing entry of Paublo Burguera, Antonio Sainero and Oliver Campos with the green machine claiming a second row start in P4 with the #90 crew starting from P7.
Starting upon a damp but drying track, the eighteen strong grid enjoyed a clean start to the race and even some significant sunshine as they raced out their opening stints with the #90 crew turning things about with the #007 crew at the end of the first hour.
With just four brief periods of caution amounting to just over half an hour of lost time, it was the more experienced #90 crew who managed to crawl their way up to the front of the race to lead for some seven laps before they and the #007 crew lost time and laps to the eventual leader through mainly the incursion of driver through penalties for track limits.
The rain eventually returned to the Portuguese circuit with just over an hour remaining and again made for some treacherous racing conditions as by the chequered flag, the positions had been reversed again with the #007 taking fourth and the #90 car sixth overall, albeit three and four laps down to the winning car respectively.
The season ambition of the #90 E2P Racing AMR are well documented within the 24H Series with the Comtoyou Racing already having declared a three car AMR powered line up within both the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance and Sprint Series – it’s just a case of where does Detout fit into all of that?
Photo credits – Gedlich Racing