and a few corners later there were GT cars all over the place; it was a little bit lairy!” Robertson reported.
“I just managed to pick my way through it and focus on getting past the other LMP3 cars before the safety car came out. That helped because it didn’t really cost us anything, it just bunched everyone up again and then just got through to the lead of the class within the first 20 minutes, then it was all about pulling out a lead to hand over to Chris and he drove really sensibly. It’s an honour to compete in the first race for them and to win it was just amazing.”
Elsewhere in GTE, Gulf Racing took a first victory with their Porsche 911 RSR GTE, which debuted at the final round at Paul Ricard last season.
Despite only qualifying fifth, as Adam Carroll struggled to find the right balance in the cold conditions, the combination of a stellar opening double-stint from Phil Keen and the fortuitous timing of the safety car during Michael Wainwright’s middle stint gave the Milton Keynes outfit a clear lap’s advantage over the JMW Motorsport Ferrari of impressive BTCC convert-Sam Tordoff, George Richardson and Robert Smith in second.
“The car worked really well, we had a bit of a scary start with so many cars going off, but everything went like clockwork really. It was easy to drive and it was pretty straightforward,” said Keen.
Matt Griffin also struggled badly in qualifying with a braking problem that cost him seven tenths in the middle sector alone, but he, Aaron Scott and Duncan Cameron were still able to recover to third in the race ahead of the Marc VDS BMW of Andy Prialux, Jesse
Krohn and Henri Hassid, which served a stop-go penalty for overtaking under yellows. Regular partners Griffin and Cameron will also be competing in tomorrow’s Blancpain Endurance Series meeting at Monza and were set to fly immediately after the race ended.
“We’ll go straight into qualifying as far as I know; that will be tough because Monza is not an easy place to go and fire out a lap straightaway,” said the Irishman after qualifying.
In GTC, Franck Perera, Dino Lunardi and Eric Dermont took the spoils for TDS Racing after their chief rivals, the no. 63 AF Corse Ferrari, were eliminated in a crash with the Massive Motorsport Aston Martin.