Calan Williams has won the GT World Challenge Sprint Silver Cup after a dramatic end to the Championship at Circuit de Catalunya, Barcelona.
Calan and co-driver Sam De Haan came into the final round with a healthy 21 point lead, but it didn’t take long for the challenges to begin. Unfortunately, due to a family emergency, Sam was unable to travel to Barcelona so would be unavailable for the event.
WRT quickly secured the services of fellow former Formula 2, and WEC BMW M4 GT3 driver Sean Gelael to substitute as Calan’s co-driver. This meant an extremely quick trip to the airport to make a flight from Indonesia with the hope of arriving at the circuit in time for the second of two practice sessions on the Friday.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t make it in time, so Calan completed all the practice. Calan went well, but the BMW was very much behind the Mercedes right from the start of the weekend with the circuit not suiting the BMW, and on the flip side being very good for the Mercedes.
With the Number 10 Mercedes being second in the Silver Championship, that was a challenge which would need to be overcome from the start, though of course with the strong points advantage in hand.
As Sean had not completed any laps in practice, the officials stipulated that he would need to qualify Saturday to enable some time in the car before racing. Whilst understandable, this was going to be very challenging, as though Sean is used to the BMW M4 GT3, in the WEC they race on Goodyear tyres which are different from the Pirellis of the GT World Challenge.
Unsurprisingly, qualifying was tough, with Sean qualifying P31 though it was a very tall ask to expect Sean to put together a lap on an unfamiliar tyre out of the box with no practice.
With heavy rain at the race start, there was a huge accident with a car bursting into flames which Sean narrowly avoided. The safety car then lasted most of the race because of the weather with the team moving the car from P31 to P16 purely through strategic stops during the Safety Car intervention.
Calan attacked with the 3 racing laps at the end still in wet conditions, and with Number 10 winning the class, the scenario for Sunday would be that Calan held a 9.5 point lead into the final race needing to secure P4 or better if Number 10 won.
Calan qualified for Race 2 in P18 and P5 Silver which was around where the performance of the car was for the weekend. Number 10 was P2. With Barcelona a difficult track to pass on, and Sean now still not having had any dry racing laps on the Pirelli, Calan would be required to be very aggressive off the start.
Off the line Calan got a great jump and took to the grass on the left of the track to make a move. He took two places off the line, but coming back onto the circuit made slight contact with the number 21 Aston Martin, though all were fine to continue into turrn 1.
The remainder of Calan’s first lap was stunning, gaining 3 more places to be P13 overall and P3 Silver, right behind P1 and 2 in class, with Number 10 ahead.
A couple of laps later, Calan overtook Number 10, and then was right on the back of the silver leader.
With many attempts, he was unable to find a way past, and eventually they would pit for the driver change, a lap later than ideal as WRT number 32 would need to pit. As a result the number 10 Mercedes was able to pass through the undercut, but importantly, Sean emerged P2 in class, but with P3, P4 and P5 directly behind him.
This was a Championship critical period, with Sean finding his feet for 2 – 3 laps whilst he felt his way with the tyres, but impressively, holding all off whilst finding his rhythm. Once this was the case, Sean’s pace was strong and he drove superbly for the rest of the race to bring them home P2 in class, giving Calan enough points to win the 2024 Sprint Cup Championship.
