Sean Edwards and Leo Machitski had the chance to really see what the new Porsche 997 RSR could do, in the first official FIA GT test of the year. Sean impressed everyone, setting the early pace for GT2 and being right up at the front by the end of day one. Leo was still getting to grips with the whole concept of the Porsche’s weird handling characteristics, comparing to his Aston Martin of last year.

Day two, Leo spent most of the testing time in the car and eventually pushed a little to hard and lost the car at the infamous Paribolica corner. He backed it into the gravel, just scraping the tyres wall. With the flat floor of the Porsche, the car acted like a bucket and was full of gravel. It took the team 3 hours to rid it of the gravel and it put everyone on the back foot missing the second session of the day, which was the fastest. Leo said “I tried to take more speed into Paribolica than Sean and it was obviously too much as I just lost the back end and couldn’t catch it in time!”

Subsequently Sean had to do his new tyre run at the end of day, when the track was not at it’s best, but still Sean posted a respectable time. He commented “The car felt really bad on the brakes, we have not had much time to tune the setup today and the new tyre run was a waste of time really. But we were happy with day one’s performance and hope to carry it over to Nogaro in a few weeks time”