Sean Edwards, driver of the No. 9 Tech 9 Porsche 997 in the FIA GT3 European Championship discusses his last outing at Dijon – a weekend which would turn out to be his best of the year, with a breakthrough win in the second race of the weekend.
We came to Dijon knowing that it was going to be a struggle, as you need downforce at the track. So we were looking to score some good points. That was all we could hope for.
Testing went well as Phil (Keen) had never driven the track or car, so he did some slow laps in the first session learning both. I then got in the car at the end with a qualifying setup too see what time it could do and we ended up 2nd.
The second session we concentrated on race setup, trying to have consistent times. We drove for the whole hour on one set of tyres, changing drivers half way through. Due to that, we were down the order a bit (11th or so), but we had a good race pace of high 23’s/low 24’s.
Phil drove the first qualifying session as he was the slower driver in testing, but he really struggled to find a gap and set his fastest time on his 7th lap, when the new tyres had gone way past their best. It was still good enough for 10th on the grid (9th due to Anthony Reid’s blown engine forcing him to start from the back).
I did the second qualifying session and got a one free lap to begin with and did a 1.21.7, but the Motec was flashing fuel pressure warning. The team gave me one more lap to better my time and then come into the pits to park it, incase the engine got damaged! I managed to find a clear space and got a slightly better lap of 1.21.6, which was good for P2 at that time. As the session wore on I dropped down to P6, but we were at the sharp end nevertheless.
In Race One, Phil had to start as he was slower in qualifying and he made a great start from 9th to 6th in the first two laps! He couldn’t get past the Vipers ahead, so he just hung onto them for his stint. The Aston caught and passed him for 6th, so he dropped to 7th. He came into the pits and handed over to me. We were up to 3rd by the time everyone had pitted and got sorted out. But then we were told we had to serve a Stop/Go for being 0.7 tenth of a second too fast out of the pits! We couldn’t argue, but we lost thirty seconds dropping down to 10th overall (still the 1st Porsche). We had lost and chance to get decent points. The car was handling quite badly in the cooler conditions to cap it all off, with very bad understeer (running high 24’s low 25’s, a second off what we were doing in the testing stint). We wouldn’t have been able to hold 3rd place, but we worked out that we should have finished 5th, but the stop/go really hampered us.
In Race 2, we softened the front roll bar and lowered the front ride height to cure some of the understeer. I started the race and it was total chaos with a Viper jumping the start and taking out the Corvette beside me, which took out the Aston behind it, which took out another Viper! Luckily I managed to get through it and got up to 4th by the first corner. The safety car came out, as those 3 cars were in the pit wall. When it came back in, I got a good run on the championship leading Viper and was down the inside for the double left out the back, he squeezed me off the track, but I was not going to back out and went across the curb and down the inside on 2 wheels with a bit of contact! From then on I just defended like mad from him, as his car was a lot faster. We both caught the 2nd place Viper as I continued to block the Viper behind. We knew that the 2nd drivers in the Vipers were slightly slower and that Phil maybe could get past them.
I came into the pits at the last possible minute (34th minute) right behind the 2nd placed Viper and I handed over to Phil. We saw the chance to get past the Viper in the pits and hold him up at the end of pitlane (65 seconds mandatory in the pits, but nothing saying you can’t slow at the end of it for the time to run out, and other cars canno’t overtake you in the pits!). So he came out in 2nd place, but the Viper got back past him a lap later. Phil then got back past the Viper in the same lap again! He then caught the leading Viper and took about 4 laps to find a way past, but when he did he started to pull a bit of a lead. The Aston Martin was on a charge in 5th and soon made his way up into 2nd place with 3 laps to go. The traffic was holding us up bad, but Phil held them all at bay and finally crossed the line with a 2 second gap (With the win!).
In no way were we expecting to win a race here at Dijon, as the other cars ARE so much faster! But we did it finally and it’s great. Onto Mugello in two weeks for the championship showdown, the Porsche should go well there!
Furthermore, the Viper of Patrick Bornhauser was found to have illegal brakes and was disqualified from race one at Dijon and they raced under appeal in race two. Their points are strictly provisional, but we will try to beat them on track and not wait until the courts settle it.
Thanks to the whole Tech9 Motorsport team: Phil Hindley, Dan, Ross, Phil Keen, Guy and Daphne (my parents) and my main sponsor SG Hambros for this amazing weekend and victory! Everyone did a perfect job all weekend and we achieved the almost impossible, thanks again too everyone involved.
