Finally the countdown was over and we headed to Francorchamps for the first race weekend in the Porsche Carrera Benelux Cup. I was excited and eager to finally get going.
On Thursday we had the free practices which went very well. In the first free practice I ended on P1 but there was still room for improvement. But during FP 2 I wasn't able to push as hard as I wanted to and I had to content myself with a second place. But overall I was happy with the free practice. It gave us a lot of good data to work with.
On Friday we had qualifying and Race 1. After the positive free practice I was really looking forward to this but sadly it didn't go entirely as planned. I struggled with track limits throughout the day and had two of my lap times deleted because of this which meant that rather than starting P3 for race one and P2 for race two, I had P7 and P6 respectively. This was far from ideal!
My first start in GT3 didn't go too badly and the first race turned out quite well. I did learn that I should be more aggressive as I was stuck behind P3 and if I had pushed a little harder, perhaps I could have had a better result. But I finished in P4. Close to the podium but not quite there!
I was keen for the second race on Saturday, I wanted to show my talent and also wanted to show what I've learned from Jos. We had discussed strategy of course and we wanted to get some points for the championship. I had a good start but after 3 laps my team mate and I had a collision. The race was over. He had misjudged the space and thought I had enough space to get through but we crashed. A tire puncture meant I had to retire from the race. This is of course very disappointing and not at all how I had imagined my first race weekend.
But on the upside we have collected a lot of good data and I have learned a lot from this weekend. I immensely enjoyed my first race weekend and I am very much looking forward to the next race at Red Bull Ring. Let's hope it will be a smoother ride but one thing's for sure! I'm focussed and ready to go.