SRT - FFSA-GT -A further podium for SRT at Dijon

In the French GT championship the Belgian SRT team sneaked another podium place. The championships are now following each other in rapid succession, and week after week SRT manages to come away with excellent results. The third meeting of the FFSA GT was held on the attractive Dijon circuit and on Saturday Laurent Cazenave and Eric Cayrolle – after Lédenon and Silverstone – raced through to a third podium for SRT in just over two weeks. Concluding a strong race the C5-R finished close behind the winning Saleen and the PSI Corvette C6.R. After various setbacks SRT finally finished in tenth place in the race on Sunday.

SRT left for Dijon having already bagged a first podium, but also with a ten second penalty during the driver-changeover. Patrick Selleslagh elaborates: "In France they not only try to balance the equivalences between the cars, as the smaller clamping plates on the Oreca Saleen, but also the equivalencies between a team’s drivers. Seeing our B-driver had performed rather well at Nogaro and Lédenon they decided to award him with a ten second handicap this weekend during the driver change-over at the halfway mark. However we’ll be adapting our strategy to these new conditions.

As has become customary Laurent Cazenave was called upon on Saturday morning for the qualifying sessions with a view to competing in the first race of the weekend. For a long time our man from Pau hovered around the fourth best time, but in a final sprint he brought the C5-R, based in Merchtem (Belgium) into second place a mere five hundredth from pole.

"Today the combination car-driver was up to within a five hundredth almost perfect", the smiling Frenchman condescendingly remarked after the session. "I would really have loved being on pole, but it’ll have to be for another time. But what is more important is that we appear to be confirming our form of these last few weeks."

During the race Cazenave once again proved to be cast out of the right mould. He had a strong start and for half an hour battled it out for the lead with Raymond Narac. He finally came into the pits as leader, but had a ten second longer stop. "But Patrick had a surprise up his sleeve and swapped the right hand side tyres during the extra time. This gave me the opportunity to go flat out during my stint", Cayrolle explained.

"I had no problem keeping to Ayari’s rhythm, but Bouchut was just quite outstanding. Perhaps I could have taken a few more risks and finished second, but I preferred playing it safe. Well at least we’ve scored a pack more points and a podium also. Achieving two podia in five races in this championship is undoubtedly a pretty remarkable performance."

On Sunday morning Eric Cayrolle was somewhat unhappy; first of all the SRT A-driver lost his fastest lap time and then it started drizzling, resulting in him only clocking up a 12th best qualifying time.

"It definitely wasn’t our day today", a disappointed Patrick Selleslagh told us after the race. "Flat tyre, Stop & Go and those extra 10 seconds stopping time: all the ingredients for a disappointing result..."

The Corvette finally still managed to finish in tenth place.

SRT’s following assignment is the second race of the FIA GT Citation Cup in Romania / Bucharest next weekend.

Results: http://www.ffsa.org/res_circuit.php?id=507  

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