Greystone GT laid strong foundations for their inaugural season of international competition as the ultra-competitive GT4 European Series kicked off at Imola, Italy, last weekend.
Drivers Tim Whale - making his full-time race return after a 20-year absence - and Adam Carroll showed consistent top-10 speed in the Pro-Am division aboard the GETTRX McLaren 570S GT4 and scored the Silverstone team’s first series finish on Sunday.
Their route there was not without the odd bump in the road; the first coming in Friday afternoon’s free-practice session when a rear puncture for Adam - a multiple international racing champion - denied him the chance to set a representative laptime.
With the onus on maximising Tim’s seat time ahead of the races, Adam completed limited laps, but this was to benefit the #47 McLaren come Saturday morning’s qualifying session.
Worcester racer Tim, who lives in Barcelona, qualified a superb ninth in Pro-Am for Race Two on a grid on which one second covered the fastest 28 drivers, while Adam put the car 12th for the opener.
Sadly that opener was not to last long as a failure of a front suspension ball joint led to instant retirement at one-third distance and a long night for the Greystone GT mechanics - whose repair job was severely delayed by the time taken for the car to be delivered back to the paddock.
With the McLaren fully repaired, Sunday gave Tim and Adam a real chance to gain experience of the GT4 European Series and its 49-car grid.
The former was swallowed up by the pack on the opening lap and ran 16th for most of his stint - which was interrupted by several Full-Course Yellow periods, but set strong lap times when released onto a clear track as the pit window opened.
Climbing aboard at half-distance, Northern Irishman Adam emerged 18th in class, but set about making up ground immediately and reached 13th by the time the race finished - predictably - under yellow-flag conditions that prevented any late passing.
Greystone GT expand to a two-car line-up for the next event at Paul Ricard, France, on June 3-5 as fellow Pro-Am pairing Richard Distl and Alain Valente join the series for the first of a planned three-round campaign.
Tim Whale said: “What a baptism of fire! Being in a 49-car pack at a track I’d never raced at before was certainly something! I think not getting any racing laps on Saturday and having that ‘soft’ introduction of doing the second half of the race put me at quite a disadvantage at the start on Sunday and I lost a few places, but the pace was quite strong and I set my fastest sectors on the in-lap when I wasn’t in among other cars. I was pleased with the qualifying pace - to be among the top-10 Am drivers in such a well-run, high-level series, when I’ve barely raced in the past 20 years, was really encouraging. To be within a second of Adam’s qualifying time too gives me a lot of confidence that we can run much higher up once I’m a little less rusty.”
Adam Carroll said: “I think we got the maximum that was possible from the McLaren at Imola. It’s not a circuit that’s at all suited to the car and in such a super-competitive pack, that made it quite a hard task to break through from the midfield. The real positive of the weekend was Tim because he’d never raced here, never done a rolling start, never done a pitstop or driver change, and yet he just worked and worked, didn’t make any silly mistakes, didn’t take any unnecessary risks and just grew across the event. He was very impressive. We need a bit more pace for Paul Ricard, but I think the smooth surface and low kerbs there will help us extract a lot more performance from the car.”
Mark McLoughlin, Team Principal, said: “The GT4 European Series is a completely new championship for us and while the results weren’t what we’d targeted, I think we’ve laid a very good foundation for the season ahead. This isn’t a McLaren circuit, but we were the fastest McLaren team. This isn’t a track that Tim’s raced at before and yet he was incredibly impressive. To be within a second of Adam - who’s won in GP2 here - was really something, and he’s had a lot to deal with; first rolling start, first multi-make race, 49 other drivers on track… It’s not an easy series to make your racing return in. We really saw the racer in Adam on Sunday as he made up a lot of ground and matched the laptimes of a car that had finished fourth the previous day.”
