Greystone GT’s maiden GT4 European Series campaign finished with a points finish in supremely-frustrating season finale at Barcelona.
The Silverstone-based team’s pair of McLaren 570S GT4s were afforded just two full racing laps during the hour-long race last Sunday as repeated incidents through the field led to a catalogue of safety-car and Full-Course Caution periods in Spain.
But despite this, Tim Whale and Adam Carroll’s #47 GETTRX McLaren and the sister #60 entry of Richard Distl and Alain Valente put on overtaking masterclasses and gained significant ground thanks to the skill of the drivers.
From 31st on the 46-car grid, Worcester-born Tim – for whom the Circuit Barcelona-Catalunya is now his local track – avoided the chaos that unfolded around him to reach the mid-point of the ‘race’, at which time the red flags were waved, in 25th.
His Professional co-driver Adam took over during the stoppage as per instructions from race control; the Northern Irishman climbing to 17th by the chequered flag; a result that netted the pair eighth in the Pro-Am division.
The pattern was similar for German racer Richard and his Swiss Professional co-driver Alain. They battled from 43rd at the start to 31st – and 16th in Pro-Am – by the flag; Alain another to make swift progress during the six minutes of ‘racing’.
A red flag in qualifying was shown out three seconds before Adam finished his fastest lap of the session – leading to it being deleted and costing him a top-six starting spot.
It also cost Alain the chance to set what would likely have been his best time on new tyres that he’d just brought into their optimum performance window.
That meant they started 15th and 17th in class and reached the pitstops seventh and 12th. Tim and Richard brought the cars home 13th and 15th, both suffering excessive tyre wear towards the end of the race.
Mark McLoughlin, Team Principal, said: “This weekend has been a case of what might have been. Looking at the progress both the #47 and #60 cars made during what was only two green-flag laps of running on Sunday, I’m sure both would have been quite a bit higher if we’d had fewer safety-car laps and no stoppage. Plus without the red flag at the worst possible time in qualifying, I think both cars could easily have been 10 places higher on the grid for Saturday’s race. Overall, our first year in the GT4 European Series has been a real experience. Tim and Adam have been fantastic and while some bad luck means they haven’t had the results their efforts deserved, podiums were within reach at more than half the events. Richard – who has never contested a full season of racing - has adapted very well in the events he’s done and we’ve always seen big progress from practice through to Sunday’s races.”
