Black flag blow for CRS Racing

YOU always expect a few curveballs at the first big race meeting of the season, but you don’t expect to get black flagged, by mistake!

Our race weekend really started on Wednesday when our team manager went to Dover to make sure our new GT3 Ferraris came off the boat without any delay.

The new cars are real stunners but to only get them a couple of days before the race meeting meant some late nights for the team.

Silverstone was a busy weekend for CRS Racing. We ran in two championships and also played host to two hundred corporate guests. The main FIA GT Championship turned out much as we expected – fiercely competitive and our biggest challenge yet.

We struggled a bit for grip at the start of the weekend and going into qualifying we were pretty sure that pole position was going to be a long shot.

Andrew Kirkaldy gave it his all but could only take fifth place on the grid. Tim Mullen fared better though in the sister GT2 Ferrari, taking third spot for him and the CRS team boss, Chris Niarchos.

Chris was one of the busiest men in the pit-lane at Silverstone as he raced in both GT2 and GT3. Qualifying didn’t go well and the Ferraris were well down the field but before the first race we got a bit of a break in the shape of bigger restrictors for the cars.

The FIA GT3 Championship has very strict rules to balance the performance between different makes of cars. It was deemed that the Ferraris had been slowed down too much so it was good to get a break, although it was too late for qualifying.

The first GT3 race was on Saturday afternoon. Chris had said he was going to go for it at the start but you really had to see it to believe it. Was that one of our Ferraris taking a very aggressive inside line through the first corner? Yes! Niarchos was on the move! He started the race from 21st place but within 15 minutes of the start he was up to 10th, eventually getting up to eighth before he pitted to hand over to his team-mate, Chris Goodwin.

This is where it all started to unravel.

There is a rule that states you must be in the pits for 70 seconds. That’s 70 seconds from crossing the pitlane entry line to the pit exit line. It generally means that the car is stationary in the pits for about 45 seconds.

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