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 practice was dry and saw Sean put the Tech 9 Porsche in third position. The team were working on their dry setup for this track, which was pretty difficult and took some time for Sean to be happy with the car over all the bumps. “At the moment we are still struggling with the car over the bumps” said Sean. “But we have set a pretty good time and I am still getting used to the track”.

Qualifying was dry and the Tech 9 machine ended up in third place, which later became second when Marc Lieb’s car was DQ from the results. “I am happy to be second, as it is really important to be near the front on a street track because it is hard to overtake” commented Sean. “I was struggling over the bumps with a light fuel load and the front of the car was jumping off the ground over them, which made me hit the wall on the exit of the last corner. Luckily there was no damage, but we are going to make a setup change for the race if it’s dry.”

Sean put the 997 RSR on top of the GT2 time sheets and seventh over all in the wet warm up and he only did 3 laps at the end of the session. “The car is really good in the wet conditions and we are looking good for the race! Porsche might even be able to win overall if it is wet enough” said Sean.

The race was going to be though, two hours round a street track in the wet and no room for error. Sean would again start the car, with Leo doing the middle stint and Sean finishing. “It is key that we don’t have any problems or mistakes, as it will probably mean the end of our race” said Sean.

The race was looking to be very wet and would start behind the safety car, as the organisers thought there might be a disaster at T1 if the normal rolling start was done. Sean got a good start and latched onto Emmanuel Collard in the #97 Porsche. Collard got by the two BMS GT1 Astons pretty quickly, but they blocked Sean for a while and he had a bit of a moment behind one on lap two. “I was following a Aston and he braked really early for T2, I had to swerve to avoid him and brushed the wall and went straight across the chicane, luckily there was no damage!”

Once he got passed the Astons, he started to real Collard in, but then the safety car came out for a big crash evolving a 575 Ferrari and an Aston Martin. Tech 9 called Sean in, to take advantage and get Leo in the car for a free pit stop.

Some how the AF Corse Ferrari managed to gain a whole lap on the GT2 field and this left all the Porsche camps very bemused. It was now looking almost impossible for a Porsche to win, unless the Ferrari had a problem. On top of it all, Tech 9 were then given a drive through penalty for supposedly having more than five people on the car in the pit stop. “Seeing as we only have five mechanics in our team, some idiot on the pit wall has made a mistake, we only had four people on our car, as we were not changing tyres, this sort of thing that is just not acceptable” said Phil Hindley (Team boss). They later found out that a mistake by a pit lane reporter, who had got teams mixed up, had cost them a drive through.

Leo handed the car back over to Sean, in 5th place, 1 lap and 30 seconds down on the GT2 leader, with 1 hour to go. Sean had to do the impossible, if they were to have any chance of winning. “I was pushing 100% to try and win the race” said Sean. He was the fastest person on track over all and was lapping 4-7 seconds a lap faster than the leading Ferrari. He was soon up to fourth place and catching Marc Lieb at 4 seconds a lap for third.

He had caught the GT2 leader and un lapped him self within 18 minutes and could see Lieb ahead. With the #97 Porsche getting a stop/go penalty of 1 minute for not stopping at the red light in pit lane, when the safety car was coming past, Sean got 3rd.

So, he was nearly in a net second place and with the Ferrari having to make a pit stop, the gap was going to be down to 45 seconds with 40 minutes to go. He was pushing really hard and ended up glancing the tyre wall on the entry to the round about! “I was just lapping the JMB Masarati of Aucott and I was offline for the last section, I braked offline and the left front locked, I managed to get it sorted but I was going way too fast for the corner and hit the tyre wall and it was game over” said a very disappointed Sean.

They were on for a definite second place and had a chance to win the race, but when you are pushing that hard on street tracks, mistakes are easily done. Sean will be looking for a better result at Monza in just over a month’s time and just try to put this weekend behind him.