Monthly Archive for May, 2007
The third round of the 2007 FIA GT championship came to Romania. A brand new venue in the city of Bucharest and the first time in 10 year that the FIA GT championship has visited a street track. Sean’s last street race was in the 1998 French karting championship, so it was going to be a whole new challenge for the young Brit.
Practice was a lottery, with the heavens opening on the Romanian streets. Sean went out on wet tyres to begin with, setting the early GT2 pace. He then came in for Intermediates and a setup change. They worked on the setup of the car, for the wet conditions and found a good balance, which put them on top of the GT2 times. Sean then got out and handed the car to Leo, who stayed on Intermediates, but other teams opted for slicks and obviously went faster on the drying track. Leo was just learning the track, before the rain came again and put a halt to Sean getting any dry running.
The second round of the 2007 FIA GT Championship visited the UK, which is the home of Sean Edwards. He was looking to impress on a circuit that he knows like the back of his hand and he certainly proved that!
Practice was a time to set up the car and try to get the best balance for qualifying and the race. But the team were struggling to set up the car for qualifying, so they changed it radically and it had seemed to work for Sean! He was P1 for most of the session and then dropped to P3 with a late charge from two Ferrari’s, but he was still top Porsche ahead of the factory backed BMS Porsche!
Sean met the 1992 world champion Nigel Mansell in a press conference today at Silverstone. “It is really weird to be racing against one of my F1 heroes from when I was young, as I was only 6 years old when he won his F1 world championship!” commented Sean.
“He is a really nice guy to be honest and is very relaxed about racing in the FIA GT championship this weekend. I wish him every success, but I will obviously be aiming to beat him.”
Sean Edwards was asked if he could come and help with the commentary for the FIA GT3 championship, which he won last year. He accepted and tried his hand at commentating on the first race of the 2007 FIA GT3 Championship and the feedback from the fans and TV directors was so good that he has been asked to do it for the whole season.
“I really enjoyed it, it was a different experience to watch and commentate on a race from behind the scenes and really interesting to see how it all works. It looks easy from the outside, but I can tell you that it is a very hard job for them, especially when going out live to thousands of people!” said Sean. “I will be helping them out for the rest of the year now, with what little time I can spare during the FIA GT weekends.”
